THE    LIVING    AGE. 


No.  940.— 7  June,  1862 


CONTENTS. 


1.  Hymnology, QuarterlyJReview, 

2.  Sister  Anna's  Probation.     Chaps.  3  and  4,     . 

3.  Ten  Days  in  Athens,  .... 

4.  Commander  Boggs  and  The  Varuna, 

5.  A  Model  Bishop, 

6.  Biographies  of  Good  Women, 

7.  The  Cradle  of  Fine  Writing,      . 

8.  The  People  are  The  Power,    .... 


Quarterly  Review, 

451 

Once  a  Week, 

472 

Spectator, 

483 

Official, 
Examiner, 

487 

488 

Spectator, 

490 

Saturday  Review, 

492 

Transcript, 

495 

I 


Poetry. — The  Dars  when  we  wore  Straps,  450.  Our  Defenders,  450.  Mourner  a-la- 
Mode,  486.  No  Hope  or  Help  in  hard  Man,  486.  The  Varuna,  486.  Valley  of  Mud, 
491.  Gravestone,  491.  Melancholy,  491.  The  Drum,  496.  Opening  of  the  Interna- 
tional Exhibition,  496*.     Ode  to  Melancholy,  496. 

Short  Articles.— The  Royal  Sign  Manual,  482.  Tunnel  through  Mont  Cenis, 
482.     Mr.  Dickens'  Readings,  482.     Tennyson's  Poems,  491. 


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IN    THE    DAYS    WHEN    WE    WORE    STRAPS, 


450 


THE    DAYS    WHEN  WE    WORE    STRAPS. 

In  the  days  when  we  wore  straps, 

Melbourne  ruled  the  commonweal, 
Taking — we  were  then  young  chaps — 

Turns  with  Wellington  and  Peel ; 
Most  of  all  our  rising  men 

Puling  in  their  nurses'  laps  : 
Some  were  not  in  being  then, 

In  the  days  when  we  wore  straps. 

Railways  were  a  wonder  new, 

In  those  days,  beneath  the  sun  ; 
Old  stage-coaches,  one  or  two, 

Did  continue  still  to  run. 
Telegraphic  wires  were  not ; 

Several  days  had  to  elapse 
Ere  our  foreign  news  we  got, 

In  the  days  when  we  wore  straps. 

Indian-rubber  then  was  dear, 

Gutta-percha  not  yet  known  ; 
No  rare  thing  was  good  strong  beer, 

Brewed  with  malt  and  hops  alone  ; 
Beer  of  which  the  likeness  flows 

From  but  few  existing  taps  ; 
None  did  bitter  ale  compose 

In  the  days  when  we  wore  straps. 

Science  had  not  yet  to  bear 

Brought  the  Sun's  pictorial  rays  ; 
Photographs  not  any  were 

Published  in  those  other  days. 
Every  Christian's  chin  was  shorn. 

Saving  only  Muntz,  perhaps, 
Beards  by  none  but  Jews  were  worn 

In  the  days  when  we  wore  straps. 

Sides  of  ladies,  robe  and  skirt 

Moderate  of  dimensions,  clad, 
Filled  no  doorway,  swept  no  dirt ; 

Petticoats  had  not  gone  mad. 
Hideous  hoops  revived  we've  seen, 

Hoops,  to  hinder  their  collapse  ! 
Folly  wore  no  Crinoline 

In  the  days  when  we  wore  straps. 

Then  Retrenchment  was  the  word ; 

Estimates  afforded  room 
For  the  censures,  duly  heard, 

Of  unflinching  Joseph  Hume. 
Fleets  and  troops  we  durst  reduce, 

In  our  armor  leaving  gaps  ; 
Ironsides  were  not  in  use 

In  the  days  when  we  wore  straps. 

Peace,  if  Plenty  did  not  reign, 

Britain's  isles  with  safety  blest ; 
Ireland  only,  and  insane 

Chartists,  troubled  England's  rest. 
Tranquil  were  the  United  States  ; 

France  to  change  her  neighbors'  maps 
Sought  not  at  those  distant  dates, 

In  the  days  when  wo  wore  straps. 

Then,  as  we  were  wont  to  boast, 
Was  the  schoolmaster  abroad, 

Whipping  every  witch  and  ghost 
Into  nothing  with  his  rod. 


Spirits,  under  tables  heard, 

Through  a  "  Medium,"  giving  raps, 
Would  have  been  thought  too  absurd 

In  the  days  when  we  wore  straps. 

Though  fine  things  of  every  kind 

Were  not,  as  at  present,  cheap, 
Folks  of  a  contented  mind 

Moderate  means  would  better  keep  ; 
What  they  did  not  throw  away, 

They  could  save,  against  mishaps  ; 
With  no  Income-Tax  to  pay 

In  the  days  when  we  wore  straps. 

— Punch. 


OUR    DEFENDERS. 

The  following  poem  of  Thomas  Buchanan 
Read,  was  written  for  the  Americans  of  Rome, 
and  was  first  read  to  them  in  the  ruins  of  Titus' 
Baths,  as  they  were  gathered  to  celebrate  last 
Fourth  of  July. 

Our  flag  on  the  land,  and  our  flag  on  the  ocean, 

An  Angel  of  Peace  wheresoever  it  goes, — 
Nobly  sustained  by  Columbia's  devotion, 
The  Angel  of  Death  it  shall  be  to  our  foes. 

True  to  our  native  sky, 

Still  shall  our  eagle  fly, 
Casting  his  sentinel  glances  afar — 

Though  bearing  the  olive  branch, 

Still  in  his  talons  standi, 
Grasping  the  bolts  of  the  thunders  of  War  ! 

Hark  to  the  sound,  there's  a  foe  on  our  border, 

A  foe  striding  on  to  the  gulf  of  his  doom ; 
Free  men  are  rising,  and  marching  in  order, 
Leaving  the  plow  and  anvil  and  loom  ! 

Rust  dims  the  harvest  sheen 

Of  scythe  and  of  sickle  keen. 
The  axe  sleeps  in  peace  by  the  tree  it  would  mar, 

Veteran  and  youth  are  out, 

Swelling  the  battle  shout, 
Grasping  the  bolts  of  the  thunders  of  War  ! 

Our  brave  mountain  eagles  swoop  from  their 
eyrie, 
Our  lithe  panthers  leap  from  forest  and  plain, 
Out  of  the  West  flash  the  flames  of  the  prairie, 
Out  of  the  East  roll  the  waves  of  tho  main  ! 
Down  from  their  Northern  shores, 
Loud  as  Niagara  pours, 
They  march  and  their  tread  wakes  the  earth 
with  its  jar, 
Under  the  Stripes  and  Stars, 
Each  with  the  soul  of  Mars, 
Grasping  tho  bolts  of  tho  thunders  of  War  ! 

Spite  of  the  sword  or  assassin's  stiletto, 
While  throbs  a  heart   in   tho  breast  of  tho 
brave, 
The  oak  of  the  North  or  the  Southern  palmetto 
Shall  shelter  no  foe  except  in  his  grave  ! 
While  tho  (Jnll  billow  breaks, 
Echoing  the  Northern  lakes, 
And  ocean  replies  unto  ocean  afar, 
Yield  wo  no  inch  of  land, 
While  there's  a  patriot  hand 
Grasping  the  bolts  of  the  thunders  of  War  ! 
— Pittsburg  Chronicle. 


1 


HYMNOLOGY. 

From  The  Quarterly  Review.       merits  in  tha  "history  of  our  Church,  -an 


a  History  ot  our  uuurcn,  -angr  has 
left  scarcely  one 'stgne  .upturned  \j?Q6ntT0- 
versy  in  its  rl^HS^  ^ispfpHnf ,  j"dt   ritual  ; 


1.  Hymns  and  Hymn-books  :  a  Letter,  etc. 
By  William  John  Blew.     1858. 

2.  The  Voice  of  Christian  Life  in  Song  :  or   while   every  irregularity  has  been  called  in 
Hymns   and    Hymn- Writers    of  many 
Lands  and  Ages.     London,  1858. 

3.  Select  Metrical  Hymns  and  Homilies  of 
Ephraem  Syrus:  translated  from  the 
Original  Syriac.  By  the  Rev.  Henry 
Burgess,  Ph.D.  '  London,  1858. 

4.  Thesaurus  Hymnologicus,  sive  Llymno- 
i  oni  Canticorum,  Scquentiarum  circa 
annum  M D  usitatarum  collectio  am- 
plissima.  H.  A.  Daniel,  Ph.D.  Lipsise, 
1850-1856. 

5.  Hymni  Latini,  Medii  JEvi.  Franc.  Jos. 
Mone.     Friburgi  Brisgovia?,  1853. 

6.  Hymni  Ecclesice  e  Breviariis  quibusdam 

Missalibus  Gallicanis,  Germanis,  His- 
panis,  Lusitanis,  desumpti.  J.  M. 
Xeale.     Oxford,  1851. 

7.  Hymnale secundumusum insignis ac  prce- 

clarce  Ecclesice  Sarisburiensis ;  acce- 
dunt  Hy.  Led.  Eboracensis  et  Hereford. 
Oxford,  1851. 

8.  Sacred  Latin  Poetry.  By  Richard  Chen- 
evix  Trench,  M.A.     1849. 

9.  Mediaeval  Hymns  and  Sequences.  Trans- 
lated from  the  Latin.  By  Rev.  J.  M. 
Xeale.     London,  1851. 

10.  Hymns  of  the  Eastern  Church.  Trans- 
lated from  the  Greek.  Bv  the  Rev.  J. 
M.  Neale,  D.D.     London,' 1862. 

11.  Lyra  Germanica :  Hymns,  etc.  Trans- 
lated from  the  German  by  Catherine 
Winkworth.  London,  1859. 
Wesleyan  Hymnology.  By  W.  P.  Bur- 
gess, Weslevan  Minister.  London, 
1846. 

A  Selection  of  Psalms  and  Hymns  for 
the  Public  Service  of  the  Church.  By 
the  Rev.  Charles  Kemble.     1855. 

14.   The    Church  Psalter    and    Hymn-book. 


VI 


13 


question,  and  every  order  more  or  1 
forced,  hymns   have  been  left  to  run  Mild. 
Their  really  great  importance  has  been  lost 
sight  of  amidst  a  clash  of  contention  over 
matters  of  more  engrossing  interest. 

But  Hymnology  itself  has  not  stood  .still 
the  while  ;  as  indeed  appears  by  the  long 
array  of  works  at  the  head  of  this  paper,  and 
a  number  of  others  bearing  upon  the  various 
branches  of  the  subject  there  represented, 
as  well  as  by  the  now  familiar  use  of  this 
very  word  "  Hymnology,"  for  which  a  writer 
of  thirty  years  ago  felt  constrained  to  apolo- 
gize. In  fact,  not  only  lias  the  study  of 
hymns  become  a  recognized  subject  of  liter- 
ary research,  but  the  hymns  actually  com- 
posed far  exceed  in  number  those  of  any 
equal  period,  except  that  which  immediately 
followed  the  great  Wesleyan  movement  just 
a  century  before. 

In  the  days  of  William  of  Orange  and  his 
immediate  successors  the  religious  energies 
of  the  people  had  been  laid  to  sleep  under 
the  so-called  orthodoxy  of  those  in  high 
places  ;  and  when  they  were  awakened  by 
the  cry  of  the  Independent  Calvinists  and 
early  Methodists,  they  found  no  channel  for 
their  devotions  but  the  Prayer-book,  which 
many  of  their  leaders  abhorred  as  a  "  form," 
and  Tate  and  Brady's  New  Version,  which 
they  felt  to  be  inadequate  to  satisfy  the  crav- 
ings of  zealous  religionists.  The  leaders 
could  preach  and  could  pray,  but  the  peo- 
ple's demand  was  for  something  to  sing  ;  so 


By   the   Rev.    W.    Mercer,    and  John    many  hymns,  so  many  tunes,  stirring,  ele- 


Goss,  Esq.     1858 
15.  Hymns  Ancient  and  Modern,  for  use  in 
the    Services   of  the   Church.     London, 
1860. 


vating,  experimental.  The  supply  was  not 
slack :  Isaac  Watts,  the  schoolmaster's  son 
at  Southampton,  taunted,  it  is  said,  by  his 
father  for    his    fastidious    objections  to  the 

A  GENERAL  impression  seems  to  prevail    Xcw  Version   (thei1  reall>'  new),  vindicated 

himself  by  writing  off  with  great  rapidity 
his  own  metrical  Psalms  and  original 
Hymns.  The  example  once  set,  and  the 
demand  increasing  with  the  spread  of  the 
revival  under  the  Wesleys,  a  deluge  of 
hymns  was  poured  out  on  the  land.    Charles 


that  the  Psalmody  of  our  Church  requires 
amendment  and  regulation."  *  With  these 
words  opened  an  article  on  our  present  sub- 
ject more  than  thirty  years  ago.  The  inter- 
val has  been  a  time  of  unusual  progress  ; 
yet  the  observation   might  be  repeated  to- 


day with  as  much  truth  as  ever.  For  while  Wesle>'  alone  contributed  six  hundred  ;  Dr. 
the  last  quarter  of  a  centurv  has  witnessed  Doddridge,  the  two  Battyes,  Cennick,  Hart, 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  religious  move-    Steele»  Toplady,  and  others,  produced  each 


LlglOUS 
*   Quarterly  Beview,  July,  1828. 


a  separate  volume  of  their  own  ;  and  a  mul- 
titude of  less  prolific  writers  swell  the  cho- 


452  HYMNOLOGY, 

tus  up  to  the  early  part  of  the  present  cen-   place,  the  editor  misapprehended  the  prin- 
tury. 

The  very  circumstance  of  Methodists  hav- 
ing adopted  hymns  kept  the  Churchmen  of 
those  days  more  strictly  to  metrical  psalms, 
and  it  was  long  before  they  raised  their 
courage  to  throw  overboard  "  Tate  and 
Brady,"  with  all  the  respectable  Church-and- 
State  associations  attached  to  them,  and 
ventured  to  spoil  the  Egyptians  by  using 
hymns  from  Bethesda.  But  by  degrees  the 
Wcsleyan  and  other  like  hymns  gained  a  more 
acknowledged  entrance  into  the  Church,  and 
indicated  the  possibility  of  some  improve- 
1  ment  upon  the  metrical  psalms.  This  was 
a  great  step,  and  for  some  years  Church 
people  were  satisfied ;  but  such  a  feeling 
could  not  last ;  for  only  so  long  as  Church- 
men were  content  to  ignore  the  order  and 
rationale  of  their  own  Prayer-book  could 
they  be  content  to  use  a  collection  of  hymns 
from  which,  more  or  less  intentionally,  all 
that  harmonized  with  the  spirit  and  arrange- 
ment of  our  services  had  been  excluded. 

The  Nonconformists,  for  the  most  part, 
had  written  the  hymns  to  supplant  the 
Prayer-book ;  the  Churchman  attempted 
with  the  same  hymns  to  illustrate  it ;  and 
the  result  was,  that  the  more  he  came  to 
understand  and  appreciate  the  latter,  the 
more  hopeless  he  found  it  to  adhere  to  the 
former. 

But  during  the  first  quarter  of  the  present 
century  hymns  of  a  character  rather  better 
suited  to  his  purpose  began  to  be  written, 
as  those  by  James  Montgomery  and  Bishop 
Heber,  whose  hymns  were  the  means  of 
calling  our  attention  to  the  subject  at  the 
time.  But  in  both  of  them  poetry  too  fre- 
quently was  aimed  at  to  the  loss  of  simplic- 
ity ;  and  the  spirit  of  the  Prayer-book  was 
not  quite  caught  by  either  the  layman  or  the 
bishop. 

Such  or  nearly  such  were  the  English 
hymns  which  presented  themselves  to  the 
collector  when  Mr.  Hall  made  the  first  dis- 
tinct attempt,  under  the  auspices  of  the  late 
Bishop  of  London,  to  compile  a  Church 
Hymn-book.  His  idea  was  that  the  hymns 
already  in  use  might  be  arranged  to  accord 
with  the  weekly  services  of  the  Church,  and, 
imperfect  as  his  book  was,  an  immense  sale 
has  proved  that  it  went  some  way  towards 
satisfying  an  acknowledged  want.  But  it 
tati  imperfect  in  two  respects.    In  the  first 


ciple  of  our  weekly  services  :  instead  of  seek- 
ing the  leading  point  around  which  the  Les- 
sons, Epistle,  Gospel,  and  Collect  of  each 
Sunday  and  Holiday  are  grouped,  and  which 
they  combine  to  enforce,  and  following  out 
the  narrative  course  of  the  Christian  year  as 
a  whole,  he  merely  looked  out  the  contents 
of  each  Lesson,  Epistle,  and  Gospel,  inde- 
pendently one  of  another,  or  some  striking 
text  in  each,  and  set  against  it  the  hymn 
most  nearly  touching  upon  it.  This  was  his 
mistake,  the  other  was  his  misfortune.  The 
Methodist  hymns,  which  formed  the  staple 
of  his  materials,  and  most  of  the  modern 
hymns,  were  not  written  for  our  services, 
and  it  could  hardly  be  expected  that  they 
would  fall  in  with  them  very  well.  The  la- 
bor and  ingenuity  by  which  Mr.  Hall  dis- 
covered any  special  connection  between  the 
hymns  and  the  services  must  have  been  very 
great ;  to  us  to  discover  it  now,  when  pointed 
out,  requires  not  a  little  pains. 

Seeing  the  blemishes  of  this  first  experi- 
ment, and  the  vain  attempts  at  improvement 
which  followed  it,  the  venerable  Society  for 
Promoting  Christian  Knowledge,  following 
up  a  suggestion  in  our  former  article,  under- 
took the  preparation  of  a  Hymn-book.  The 
error  in  principle,  to  which  we  have  alluded, 
was  here  avoided  ;  but  practically,  from  hav- 
ing few  new  sources  to  draw  from,  the  im- 
provement is  less  marked  than  could  be 
wished,  and  the  barbarous  curtailing  of  good 
hymns  (for  want;,  we  suppose,  of  courage  to 
break  boldly  enough  through  the  old  Pro- 
crustean system  of  "  three  verses  and  the 
1  Gloria  Patri,' "  which  the  prolixity  and 
pointlessness  of  Tate  and  Brady  had  entailed 
upon  us)  is  very  disappointing.  However 
large  the  circulation  of  these  two  books,  they 
left  many  persons  unsatisfied.  What  the 
Society  had  failed  to  do  well  was  taken  up 
by  numberless  individuals,  some  to  do  better, 
many  worse  ;  and  there  cannot  be  less  than 
two  hundred  hymnals  now  in  use,  all  pub- 
lished within  the  last  thirty  years. 

So  far  up  to  the  present  time.  Most  hap- 
pily and  most  wisely,  the  subject  has  been 
left  hitherto  to  individuals  to  work  out. 
The  field  has  been  left  open,  and  an  induce- 
ment thereby  offered  to  all  to  work  freely 
and  do  their  best.  We  have  thus  obtained 
a  large  number  of  hymns  of  an  improved 
tone,  and  showing  a  more  intimate  acquaint- 


ance  with  the  subject  generally.  A  very  I 
slight  comparison  of  what  we  have  and  what 
we  know  now  with  the  resources  and  knowl- 
edge of  thirty  years  ago  will  satisfy  us  that, 
in  spite  of  all  the  disadvantages  of  the  pres- 
ent system,  much  good  has  come  of  it.  If  it 
has  left  much  to  be  done — perhaps  much  to 
be  undone — yet  it  has  done  not  a  little  al- 
ready ;  as  may  be  seen  by  the  great  improve- 
ment manifested  in  the  interesting  collection 
of  "  Hymns  Ancient  and  Modern  "  which 
stands  last  upon  our  list.  Numberless 
hymns  have  been  thus  elicited,  original  and 
translated,  which  would  never  have  seen  the 
light  under  other  circumstances ;  they  have 
been  sifted  through  the  various  tastes  of 
compilers,  and  tested  farther  by  being  sub- 
mitted to  popular  use.  Some  have  fully  es- 
tablished their  popularity,  some  have  been 
as  clearly  rejected.  But  a  multiplicity  of 
collections  quite  overwhelming — consequent 
confusion  and  corruption  of  hymns — a  breach 
of  uniformity  more  vexatious  now  than  ever, 
because  of  the  easy  intercourse  between  dif- 
ferent localities — charges  of  heterodoxy — 
appeals  to  the  bishops — suppression  of 
hymns — platform  tirades  and  newspaper  con- 
troversies— all  together  cry  aloud  for  some 
"  amendment  and  regulation." 

Complaints  against  many  of  the  existing 
Hymn-books  are  but  too  well  founded.  We 
should  rather  eschew  the  responsibility  of 
disturbing  the  confidence  of  congregations 
by  pointing  out,  without  being  able  to  rem- 
edy, the  graver  errors  of  doctrine  in  the 
books  put  into  their  hands  ;  but  offences 
most  glaring  against  taste,  reverence,  con- 
sistency, and  even  grammar,  abound  to  an 
incredible  extent.  In  the  first  place,  it  is 
scarcely  too  much  to  say  that  most  compil- 
ers have  started  without  any  clear  conception 
of  what  is  a  hymn.  It  is  an  error  as  old  as 
the  days  of  St.  Augustine,  who  has  laid 
down  a  definition  of  a  hymn  which,  if  ap- 
plied to  many  of  our  books,  would  leave  be- 
hind a  very  small  residuum.  A  hymn,  he 
tells  us,  must  be  "  praise — the  praise  of  God 
— and  this  in  the  form  of  song." 

That  hymns  should  be  addressed  to  God 
one  would  not  expect  to  find  doubted ;  yet 
practically  this  rule  has  been  set  aside,  not 
only  by  those  whose  doctrine  and  custom 
sanction  invocations  of  saints,  but  by  others 
who  have  been  led  to  do  so  bv  mere  love  of 


HYMNOLOGY.  453 

poetry.  Bishop  Heber  frequently  fell  into 
this  snare,  as  in  his 

"  Brightest  and  best  of  the  sons  of  the  morning, 
Dawn  on  our  darkness  and  lend  us  thine  aid  ; 

Star  of  the  East  the  horizon  adorning, 

Guide  where  our  Infant  Redeemer  is  laid." 

How  surprising  it  is  that  Pope's  cele- 
brated apostrophe  to  his  soul, 

"  Vital  spark  of  heavenly  flame  !  "  etc. 
and  Toplady's, 

"  Deathless  Principle  !  arise  !  "  etc. 

should  ever  be  admitted  as  appropriate  to  the 
worship  of  God,  grand  though  they  be  as 
poetry.  And  this  brings  us  to  the  third 
point  in  the  definition  ;  namely,  that  a  hymn 
must  be  in  the  form  of  song ;  for  song  is 
not  poetry. 

Addison's  well-known  paraphrase 

"  The  spacious  firmament  on  high, 
"With  all  the  blue  ethereal  sky, 
And  spangled  heavens,  a  shining  frame, 
Their  Great  Original  proclaim,"  etc.,  etc. 

if  it  is  poetry,  is  certainly  not  song,  yet  has 
been  brought  by  old  associations  into  many 
Hymn-books. 

Happy  would  it  be  both  for  writer  and 
reader  if  these  were  the  only  offences  against 
which  we  have  to  protest.  It  is  a  painful 
thing  to  speak  reproachfully  of  labors  of 
love,  when  they  are  spoilt  and  tend  to  spoil 
by  errors  of  taste  and  judgment ;  yet  the 
hidden  wound  is  the  most  dangerous,  and  to 
be  cured  must  be  uncovered  ;  and  our  pro- 
posed amendment  of  hymns  ought  not  to  be 
marred  by  passing  over  the  faults  of  well- 
intentioned  but  ill-judging  compilers. 

The  following  breaches  of  good  taste  and 
reverence  must  be  truly  lamentable  in  their 
effects  on  the  undisciplined  mind,  and  as 
truly  repulsive  to  persons  of  education  : — 

"The  world,  with  Sin  and  Satan, 
In  vain  our  march  opposes  ; 
By  thee  we  shall  break  through  them  all, 
And  sing  the  song  of  i\  fasts." 


My  God,  till  I  received  thy  stroke. 
J  low  like  a  beast  icas  I !  " 


"  Lord,  break  these  bars  that  thus  confine, 
The>c  chains  that  ;jad  me  10  ; 
Say  to  thai  ugly  jailer,  Sin, 
'  Loose  him  and  let  him  go.'  " 

And  these,  let  it  be  observed,  are  from  no 
obsolete   collections,  but    from  hymnals  ic 


454 


use    in    churches,   and    advertised 
within  the  last  twelvemonth. 

Another  common  fault  of  hymnals  of  a 
certain  class  is  one  which  is  inconsistent  in 
Englishmen,  whose  national  boast  has  ever 
been  manliness,  and  inexcusable  in  Church- 
men possessed  of  a  Bible  and  Prayer-book, 
the  language  and  tone  of  which  are  une- 
qualled in  noble  simplicity.  To  deny  a 
place  to  healthy  sentiment,  would  be  to  re- 
ject a  gift  of  the  Almighty ;  but  surely  the 
following  puerilities  and  prettyisms  are  un- 
bearable : — 

"  The  Infancy  of  Jesus. 

"  Dear  little  One  !  how  sweet  thou  art ! 
Thine  eyes  how  bright  they  shine  ! 
So  bright  they  almost  seem  to  speak 
When  Mary's  look  meets  thine  ! 

"  Jesns  !  dear  Babe  ;  those  tiny  hands 
That  play  with  Mary's  hair 
The  weight  of  all  the  mighty  worlds 
This  very  moment  bear." 

"  The  Trice  Shepherd. 

'*  I  was  wandering  and  weary 

When  my  Saviour  came  unto  me; 
For  the  ways  of  sin  grew  dreary, 

And  the  world  had  ceased  to  woo  me; 
And  I  thought  I  heard  him  say, 
A^  he  came  along  the  way, 
0  silly  souls,  come  near  mc ! 
My  sheep  should  never  fear  me  ! 

I  am  the  Shepherd  True. 
***** 

He  took  me  on  his  shoulder, 

And  tenderly  he  kissed  mc  ; 
And  hade  my  love  he  holder, 

And  said  how  he  had  missed  me. 
And  I  thought,"  etc.,  etc. 

The  following  words  put  into  the  mouth 
of  the  Saviour,  yet  to  be  rehearsed  by  the 
people,  are  from  a  hymn  on  the  text,  "  She 
is  not  dead,  but  slecpeth  :  " — 

"  '  Refreshed  hv  still  waters,  in  green  pastures 

fed, 
The  day  is  gone  by  ;  1  am  making  thy  bed.'  " 

In  keeping  with  these,  but  not  with  a  duly 
reverent  approach  to  God,  are  such  epithets 
profusely  applied  to  Christ  as  "  sweet"  and 
"  dear,"  which  no  man  would  use  in  suppli- 
cation to  an  equal  of  like  nature  with  him- 
self; and  the  free  use  of  the  word  Jehovah, 
"  the  incommunicable  name,"  for  which  the 
Hebrews  and  ;'ll  Christian  translators  after 
them  ever  substituted  "  Lord."  The  many 
lesser  offences  in  English  hymns  must  have 
often  tried  the  patience,  and  disturbed  the 
devotion,  of  worshippers;  but  their  name  is 


HYMNOLOGY. 

for   sale 


Legion,  and  they  set  at  defiance  every  rule 
in  turn  of  grammar,  rhyme,  metre,  and 
good  sense.  Here  are  two  short  extracts, 
the  would-be  pathos  of  which  is  most  pro- 
voking : — 

"  Nay,  I  cannot  let  thee  go 
Till  a  blessing  thou  bestow  ; 
Do  not  turn  away  thy  face, 
Mine's  an  urgent  pressing  case." — Neicton. 

"  Behold  a  stranger  at  the  door  ! 
He  gently  knocks  ;   has  knocked  before  ; 
Has  waited  long  ;  is  waiting  still  : 
You  use  no  other  friend  so  ill." 

The  manifest  inconsistency  of  setting  a 
congregation  to  sing  hymns  of  a  purely  and 
personally  experimental  character  has  been 
most  strangely  overlooked.  The  earlier 
hymn-books  teem  with  examples  of  this 
public  self-anatomy,  e.g. : — 

"  What  sinners  value,  I  resign." 

"  How  long  the  time  since  Christ  began 
To  call  in  vain  on  me  ! 
Deaf  to  his  warning  voice  I  ran 
Through  paths  of  vanity." 

Or  Newton's  : — 

"  'Tis  a  point  I  long  to  know  ; 
Oft  it  causes  anxious  thought ; 
Do  I  love  the  Lord  or  no  ? 
Am  I  his,  or  am  I  not  ?  " 

Can  this  be  a  legacy  left  us  by  the  high- 
pew  system,  wdien  men,  curtained  in  oak 
and  red  baize,  may  have  thought  they  came 
to  church  for  their  private  orisons  ? 

We  leave  to  divines  the  errors  of  doctrine 
which  have  crept  in  unawares  from  all  sides 
with  the  subtle  flow  of  the  metre, — the  pill  of 
heresy  silvered  with  rhyme.  It  is  a-sad  truth, 
that  every  one  who  was  dissatisfied  with  the 
obvious  teaching  of  the  Prayer-book  and  Ar- 
ticles has  sought  a  vent  for  his  opinions  in  a 
hymn-book.  The  Calvinist  has  Calviuized, 
and  the  sympathizer  with  Home  has  Roman- 
ized, the  services  of  his  Church  by  his 
hymns;  and  although  good  theologians 
would  no  more  think  of  grounding  an  argu- 
ment on  a  hymn  than  on  an  impassioned 
sermon,  yet  the  unwary  may  easily  imbibe 
false  notions  from  either. 

We  leave  to  the  working  parish-priest 
the  duty  of  guarding  against  fine  writing  to 
the  detriment  of  that  plainness  of  speech 
so  essential  to  the  poor,  yet  so  unaccounta- 
bly forgotten  by  those  would-be  specially 
popular  writers  the  Methodists,  who  think 


HYMNOLOGY. 


455 


nothing  of  using  "  ineffable,"  "  omnipo- 
tent," "  beauteous,"  "  timorous,"  and  the 
like,  instead  of  their  common  synonyms, 
and  indulge  freely  in  such  stilted  phrases 
as 

"  Infinite  grace  !  Almighty  charms  ! 
Stand  in  amaze,  ye  rolling  skies,"  etc. 

and  often,  in  consequence,  come  down  sud- 
denly to  a  bathos  all  the  worse  by  contrast, 


"  Shout,  O  earth,  in  rapturous  song, 
Let  your  strains  be  sweet  and  strong." 

"  At  siirn  of  him  yon  Seraphs  bright 
Exalting  clap  their  wings." 

We  leave  to  the  church  musician  the 
innumerable  cases  of  false  accentuation, 
merely  stating  from  experience  that  many- 
lines  convey  a  different  sense,  when  accented 
musically,  from  that  which  the  author,  who 
only  read  his  lines,  intended ;  many  are  left 
with  no  sense  at  all. 

It  will  be  a  pleasure  to  us  and  the  reader 
to  pass  from  this  fault-finding,  to  discover, 
if  possible,  the  causes  on  one  side,  and  the 
remedy  on  the  other.  The  primary  cause 
we  take  to  be  this  :  We  have  started  to  pro- 
vide hymns  without  what  military  men 
would  call  "  a  basis  of  operations  ;  "  and 
this  not  because  we  have  it  not,  but  because 
we  have  overlooked  it.  We  have  compiled 
hymnals  ad  nauseam  upon  all  sorts  of  plans, 
while  we  had  in  our  hands  a  framework  ask- 
ing to  be  furnished,  and  offering  a  principle 
for  our  guidance  in  which  all  agree.  We 
went  on  as  if  a  hymn-book  was  to  be  an  in- 
dependent service-book,  instead  of  being  a 
complement  to  the  Prayer-book  ;  and  thus 
it  happens  that  our  hymns,  in  their  tone, 
their  style,  their  character,  and  their  spirit, 
jar  sadly  with  our  prayers  and  lessons, 
whereas  they  ought  to  form  with  them  an 
integral  part  of  one  well-harmonized  whole. 
Take,  for  example,  a  hymn — one  in  itself 
unobjectionable — from  the  Hymn-book  of 
the  Christian  Knowledge  Society.  Let  us 
suppose  ourselves  in  one  of  our  old  parish 
churches,  the  very  type  of  liturgical  wor- 
ship, consistency,  reverence,  and  solemnity, 
on  the  Sunday  after  Ascension,  where  the 
Morning  Prayer,  Litany,  and  Communion 
Service  are  said,  it  may  be  chorally  or  not, 
so  it  be  done  in  the  spirit  of  our  Church's 
worship.  All  is  in  keeping  until  after  the 
third  collect,  when  Hymn  60  is  given  out ; 


instantly  we  must  shake  off  the  sense  of  sup- 
1  plication  with  which  we  joined  in  the  prayers, 
and  make  ready  for 

"  Salvation  !  Oh,  the  joyful  sound  ! 
'Tis  pleasure  to  our  ears, 
Asovciviirn  halm  for  every  wound, 
A  cordial  for  our  fears." 
*  #  *  *  * 

"  Salvation  !  Let  the  echo  fly 
The  spacious  earth  around  ! 
While  all  the  armies  of  the  sky 
Conspire  to  raise  the  sound." 

And  then,  with  equal  promptitude,  we  must 
subside  from  this  apostrophe  (all  well  in  its 
place)   into   a  state  of  mind    fitted  for  the 

j  solemn  invocations  of  the  Litany.  Cases  of 
this  kind  are  common  enough,  if  not  quite 
so  bad ;  and  we  leave  it  to  the  compilers 
who  provide,  and  the  clergy  who  select,  the 
hymns,  to  decide  who  is  most  to  blame. 
We  would  earnestly  urge  on  both  that  every 
hymn  to  be  telling  must  be  well  placed  ;  that 

'■  it  must  bear  a  relation,  not  only  to  the  whole 
service  of  the  day,  but  to  that  particular 
part  which  precedes  or  follows  it. 

It  may  seem  to  some  that  ail  these  restric- 

, tions  would  result  in  the  production  of  a 
book  of  which  it  might  be  said  (as  one  com- 
piler complacently  says  of  his  own)  that  any 
recommendations  it  may  possess  are  chiefly 
negative  (!) ;  that  so  much  concession  to  the 
prejudices  of  the  many  users  would  elimi- 
nate all  that  is  striking  and  forcible.  It 
may  be  asked  in  reply,  Is  this  the  case  with 
our  Prayer-book  ?  Yet  was  not  that  sub- 
jected to  the  most  rigorous  revision,  and 
does  it  offend  in  any  one  of  the  above 
points  ? 

This,  however,  admits  of  no  doubt,  that 
there  is  much  which  is  as  it  ought  not  to  be 
in  our  present  hymn-books  ;  and  the  feeling 
is  beginning  to  gain  ground,  that,  if  we  go 
much  longer  without  change  for  the  better, 
we  shall  grow  worse.  A  remedy  has  already 
been  proposed,  and  it  is  this  which  has  given 
rise  to  these  observations.  A  motion  was 
brought  before  the  Convocation  of  Canter- 
bury in  the  early  part  of  last  year  by  the 
Archdeacon  of  Coventry  (and  carried  in  the 
lower  house,  though  afterwards  thrown  out 
by  the  bishops)  urging  the  formation  of  a 
Committee  who  should  prepare  the  draft  of 
a  hymn-book  with  select  paraphrases  of  the 
of  1'  1ms,  and  with  the  Canticles 
pointed  for  chanting,  "which,  if  approved 
by  Convocation,  may  be  submitted  to  Her 


456  HYMNOLOGY 

Majesty,  with  an  humble  prayer  that  she 
•would  authorize  its  use  in  such  congrega- 
tions as  may  be  disposed  to  accept  it."  * 
Passing  over  all  minor  questions  as  to  the 
source  and  application  of  authority,  we  take 
the  motion  as  broadly  suggesting  the  per- 
missive, but  not  enforced,  use  of  a  hymn- 
book  bearing  the  "  imprimatur "  of  the 
Church  of  England.  We  are  at  a  loss  to 
discover  whether  this  is  meant  to  withdraw 
de  facto  the  present  assumed  liberty  of  using 
others,  and  to  throw  back  all  who  are  not 
"  disposed  to  accept "  this  upon  the  Old  and 
Xcw  Versions,  which  hitherto  alone  rejoice 
in  a  royal  license. 

There  is  no  doubt  at  first  sight  something 
like  hardship  in  such  a  use  of  the  high  hand 
of  authority — such  an  arbitrary 

"  Overthrow, 
Crushing  and  pounding  to  dust  the  crowd  be- 
low ;  " 

not  only  making  of  their  books 

"  But  a  mashed  heap,  a  hotchpotch  of  the  slain ;  " 

but  freely  selecting,  revising,  and  re-arrang- 
ing the  scattered  materials  to  construct  an- 
other, and  setting  at  naught  all  respect  for 
their  sole  proprietorship  in  their  own  labors. 
Their  zeal,  however,  in  the  good  cause, 
shown  in  their  past  exertions,  may  fairly  be 
taken  as  an  earnest  of  their  public  spirit, 
and  a  ground  for  supposing  them  ready  to 
adopt  the  sentiment  of  Whitgift's  last  words, 
prefixed  by  Bishop  Mant  to  his  own  labors 
in  this  cause — "  Pro  Ecclesia  Dei,  pro  Ec- 
clesia  Dei."  But  there  are  other  objections 
which  have  been  raised  to  any  authoritative 
interference  in  this  matter  ;  and  there  are 
good  old  prejudices,  too,  in  favor  of  Tate  and 
Brady,  or  the  accustomed  Hymn-book,  which 
must  be  removed  by  some  outweighing  rea- 
sons in  favor  of  the  proposed  step.  Habit 
is  second  nature  ;  and  we  have  been  so  long 
left  to  ourselves,  that  what  Mr.  Blew  calls 
"  the  patent  defect  of  an  authorized  hymn- 
book  "  is  not  patent  to  the  generality  of  peo- 
ple. Yet  if  purity  of  doctrine  is  important; 
if  the  motto  of  our  Church,  "  that  we  all 
speak  (he  same  things"  is  to  be  retained  ;  if 
the  religious  tone  of  the  people  is  to  be  con- 
sidered, a  very  cursory  glance  at  existing 
collections  will  satisfy  us  that  some  "  regu- 
lation "  is  greatly  needed.     And  it  would  be 

*  The  same  proposition  has  since  been  sub- 
mitted to  the  Convocation  of  York. 


but  consistent  that  we,  who  have  a  pre- 
scribed book  of  prayers,  should  also  have 
some  restriction  upon  our  hymns.  Again : 
the  Prayer-book  is  itself  imperfect  without 
its  complement  of  hymns  or  anthems  ;  for, 
to  pass  by  the  plain  recognition  of  such  sing- 
ing in  the  Rubric,  we  may  fairly  test  the 
perfection  of  anything  by  a  comparison  with 
its  professed  model,  especially  when  to  that 
model  it  stands  in  the  relation  of  an  off- 
spring. Now  it  is  well  known  that  the  pre- 
Reformation  Prayer-books,  after  the  pattern 
of  which  ours  was  framed,  had  their  regular 
arrangement  of  metrical  hymns  throughout. 
And  it  was  by  no  means  the  intention  of  the 
Reformers  to  deprive  us  of  these,  at  once 
the  most  popular  and  least  corrupt  parts  of 
the  old  services.  Cranmer  himself  tried  his 
hand  upon  the  "  Salve  festa  dies,"  but  gave 
it  up  in  despair,  writing  to  the  king,  "  that, 
as  his  English  verses  wanted  the  grace  and 
faculty  which  he  could  wish  they  had,"  he 
craved  of  "  his  majesty  that  he  would  cause 
some  other  to  do  them  in  more  pleasant 
English  and  verse."  It  would  further  be 
difficult  to  discover  a  reason  for  our  differing 
in  this  point  from  almost  every  national 
Church.  Eastern  and  Western,  Greek  and 
Russian,  Roman  and  Reformed,  are  richly 
provided  by  the  constituted  authorities,  and 
why  not  the  Anglican  ?  One  of  our  own  off- 
shoots, the  Church  in  America,  put  forth  her 
selection  seventy  years  ago,  and  that  in 
Scotland  recently.  To  those  who  think  it 
an  insuperable  evil  to  shut  out  forever,  or  at 
least  for  a  long  time,  the  inspirations  of  a 
future  Ken,  a  Cowper,  a  Wesley,  or  a  Keble, 
it  may  be  answered  that  the  same  argument 
would  have  prevented  the  fixing  of  all 
prayers  ;  and  that  hymns  of  real  merit  here- 
after composed  may  be  at  some  future  time 
adopted  by  competent  authority.  To  those 
again  among  the  clergy  who  would  say,  with 
the  late  Mr.  Newland,  "  If  I  am  not  to  be 
trusted  in  the  selection  of  hymns,  neither 
am  I  to  be  trusted  in  composing  sermons," 
we  should  say  that  not  only  does  this  also 
prove  too  much,  for  it  is  equally  applicable 
to  prayers  ;  but  there  is  a  great  difference 
between  that  which  is  spoken  to  the  people 
as  the  expression  of  the  preacher's  thoughts, 
and  that  which  is  put  into  the  mouths  of  the 
congregation  to  be  rehearsed  as  the  words 
of  the  Church  in  worship  of  which  they  are 
a  part. 


HYMNOLOGY.  457 

and  Germany,  in  search  of  such  apparently 
homely  things  as  hymns. 

1.  The  Hebrew  hymns  lay  first  claim  to 
our  notice,  not  only  by  right  of  their  su- 
preme antiquity,  but  as  being  enshrined  in 


Bu\  assuming  this  question  settled  in  the 
affirmative,  and  a  committee  of  divines, 
poets,  musicians,  and  ritualists  appointed  to 
this  woik,  they  have  a  task  before  them  that 
no  one  can  estimate  until  he  has  sounded 
the  depth  and  width  of  the  subject  himself.  :  the  Sacred  Volume.     They  fall  naturally  into 


Hymns  hive  a  history,  a  philosophy,  and  a 
literature  of  their  own.  Hymnology  has  its 
roots    in    the    beginnings    of    history,    its 


three  classes  :  1.  The  occasional  pieces,  scat- 
tered up  and  down  the  books  of  the  Old 
Testament ;  2.  The  authorized  collection  of 


branches    are    co-extensive   with    Christen-   the  Jews  themselves,  known  as  the  Psalms 


dom,  and  it  requires  a  special  study  which 
has  never  yet  been  bestowed  upon  it.     It  is 


of  David,  gathered  together,  probably  out 
of  a  vast  number,  of  which  the  rest,  being 


a  subject  of  no  little  importance  to  the  pur-   rejected  as  uninspired,  have  been  lost  ;  and 


ity  and — may  we  add? — the  popularity  of 
religion.  Yet  it  is  far  from  being  a  merely 
popular,  transient,  and  superficial  matter  : 
the  well-known  saying  of  the  politician, 
"  Let  me  make  a  people's  ballads,  and  let 
who  will  make  their  laws,"  has  its  counter- 
part in  religion  ;  for  all  leaders  of  religious 
movements,  from  Arius  to  Wesley,  have 
borne  witness  to  the  fact  that  hymns  are 
more  powerful  in  fixing  religious  dogmas, 
and  guiding  religious  feeling,  in  the  minds 


3.  The  hymns  of  the  New  Testament, — the 
Magnificat,  the  Nunc  dimittis,  and  the  Bene- 
dictus. 

Of  the  first  class  Dr.  Neale  gives  a  cata- 
logue in  his  "  Commentary  "  (Diss.  I.)  of 
more  than  seventy,  as  they  are  found  ar- 
ranged in  the  Mozarabic  Breviary  to  be 
used  as  Canticles.  The  best  known  are  the 
two  Songs  of  Moses  (Exodus  15 :  1-19  ; 
Deut.  32:  1-12),  the  Song  of  Deborah 
(Judges,  5),  of  Balaam   (Numbers  23),  of 


of  the  people  than  any  other  mode  of  teach-   Hannah   (1    Samuel  2  :   1-10),   and  of  Job 


ing.  What  is  powerful  for  good  may  be, 
and  often  has  been,  more  powerful  for  ill; 
and  it  is  not  always  that  which  is  positively 
evil,  but  frequently  that  which  is  negatively 
and  poorly  good,  that  works  most  harm.     It 


(19:  25-27).  With  the  exception  of  the 
last,  which  is  sung  by  the  priest  in  our 
Burial  Service,  the  Church  of  England  has 
not  adopted  any  of  these  ;  and  very  few  are 
sufficiently  general  in  their  allusions  to  be 


is  well  then  that  we  should  keep   in  mind   fitted,  without   a  somewhat  strained  inter- 


the  necessity  of  a  more  extended  view  of 
hymnology  in  those  who  undertake  the  pro- 


pretation,  to  our  times  and   circumstances. 
Some  one  or  two,  however,  have  been  suc- 


posed  task  than  has  yet  been  generally  taken   cessfully  rendered  in  English  metre,  as,  for 
of  it.  instance,  Isaiah's  Hymn  (52  :  7,  8),  by  Dr. 


A  considerable  number  of  the  hymns  al-  j  Watts,  in  his 
ready  in  use  in  the  English  language  owe 
their  origin,  more  or  less  directly,  in  the 
various   degrees   of  "  translation,"    "  para- 


"  How  beauteous  are  their  feet 
Who  stand  on  Zion's  Hill  !  " 

As  regards  the  Psalms  and  New  Testa- 


phrase,"  and  "  imitation,"  to  the  inspirations  '  ment  Hymns,  we  are  saved  further  trouble  ; 


of  other  ages  and  other  lands  ;  but  hitherto 
we  have  gone  only  as  chance  gleaners,  and 
our  gatherings  have  been  scanty,  and  par- 
tially chosen  ;  it  is  time  we  went  as  a  Church 
and  a  nation,  and  boldly  laid  claim  to  our 
right,  as  members  of  the  great  brotherhood, 
to  a  full  participation  in  the  common  store. 


for  our  Church  has  already  appropriated  and 
recast  in  our  own  tongue  the  whole  of  these 
glorious  outpourings  of  the  prophet-poets 
of  the  old  dispensation,  and,  so  to  say,  put 
the  mark  of  Christianity  upon  them  by  the 
addition  of  the  "  Gloria  Patri  Filio,"  etc., 
at  the  end  of  each  :  the   Psalter  is  recited 


It  will,  therefore,  be  worth  while  to  take  a  throughout  by  us  every  month,  and  the  Can- 
rapid  general  survey  of  the  hymnology  of  tides  daily  in  turn.  With  this,  then,  we 
foreign  churches;  and  we  hope  our  readers  should  have  omitted  further  notice  of  Jewish 
will  not  be  startled  when  they  are  told  that  hymnology  ;  but  that  we  fancy  we  hear  some 
they  are  to  be  carried  off  to  Jerusalem  and  of  our  readers  ask,  perhaps  with  some  indig- 
Antioch,  and  brought  home  gradually  by  '■  nation,  whether  we  have  forgotten  the  met- 
Corinth  and  Milan,  through  France,  Spain,  rical  versions  of  the  Psalms.     We  have  not 


458 


HYMNOLOGY, 


forgotten  them — we  never  shall:  we  know 
that  every  notion  of  metrical  singing  in 
England  was  for  two  centuries  founded  upon 
and  limited  by  "  Sternhold  and  Hopkins," 
or  "  Tate  and  Brady  ;  "  but  surely,  the  days 
of  the  "  versions  "  are  numbered.  Have  we 
not  already  in  our  most  beautiful  Prayer- 
book  translation  all  the  sublimity,  poetry, 
devotional  pathos,  and  innate  music  of  the 
Psalter,  fully  preserved  in  its  original  form, 
and  that  form  not  only  the  best  suited  to  its 
spirit,  but  in  its  rhythmical  cadence  and  fit- 
ness for  musical  recitation  unequalled  by  the 
smoothest  metre?  The  world  is  indebted 
to  our  own  Bishop  Lowth  for  the  discovery 
that  the  Psalms  (and  we  may  add  the  Can- 
ticles) are  written  in  a  most  complete  sys- 
tem of  rhythmical  arrangement,  guided  not 
by  sound  but  by  sense — thought  answering 
to  thought,  and  sentence  to  sentence,  in- 
stead of  line  to  line,  and  ending  to  ending. 
The  96th  Psalm  and  the  Magnificat  have 
been  pointed  out  as  good  examples,  espe- 
cially the  7th  and  8th  verses  of  the  latter, 
which  are  cases  of  antithetical  parallelism  : 

He  hath  put  down  from 

their  scat  =  And  hath  exalted. 

The  mighty  =  The      humble    and 

meek. 
The  hungry  =  The  rich. 

He  hath  filled  with  good  =  He  hath  sent  empty 

things  away. 

Most  happily  for  us,  this  character  of  the 
originals  has  been  admirably  retained  in  our 
Authorized  Versions,  both  in  the  Bible  and 
Prayer-book  ;  and  one  cannot  help  feeling 
the  fitness  of  their  parallel  structure  for  the 
antiphonal  chanting  of  our  choirs  ;  and,  with- 
out doubt,  these  were  written  for  some  like 
method  of  singing  (see  1  Samuel  18 :  7) ; 
but  this  very  fitness  for  the  one  makes  them 
unfit  for  the  other  method  ;  for  how  improb- 
able, and  indeed  impossible,  it  must  be,  as 
the  learned  and  judicious  Archdeacon  Evans 
observes,  that  a  rhythmical  structure  of  par- 
allel thoughts  should  co-exist  with  a  metri- 
cal structure  of  words  !  Let  any  one,  for 
instance,  seek — it  will  be  in  vain — for  any 
marked  parallelism  in  Tate  and  Brady's  met- 
rical V 

We  readily  allow  that  here  and  there  a 
happy  paraphrase,  whether  from  the  Old  and 
New  Versions,  or  from  the  many  others  that 
have  appeared  at  different  times,  might  claim 
a  place  as  an  independent  hymn,  including 


of  course  the  "  Old  Hundredth  ;  "  But  we 
must  confess  that  we  see  little  reason  to 
dwell  longer  upon  the  metrical  Psa'ms  as  a 
source  for  supplying  any  considerable  por- 
tion of  such  a  collection  as  we  need  and  still 
less  as  having  any  claim  to  stand  as  a  dis- 
tinct branch  of  our  hymnology,  is  contem- 

'  plated  in  the  motion  of  Archdeaccn  Sandford 

:  mentioned  above.  It  is,  no  doubt,  their 
scriptural  origin  that  has  led  hitherto  to 
this    distinction ;  but    this    sane   reasoning 

|  would  include  all  the  Scotch  and  other  par- 
aphrases of  passages  of  Scripture,  such  as 

'  Morrison's 

"  The  race  that  long  in  darkness  sat;  " 

the  hymn 

"  Thou  God,  all  honor,  glory,  power," 

from  the  Revelations  ;  and 

!  "  While    shepherds    watched    their    flocks    by 
night." 

Indeed,  the  fact  that  the  Psalms  form  part 
of  the  Holy  Scriptures  ought  to  make  us  all 
the  more  unwilling  to  subject  them  to  the 
dilution  which  is  unavoidable  in  rendering 
them  into  metre. 

But  we  cannot  dismiss  the  metrical  Psalms 
without  calling  them  to  account  for  the  ob- 
jectionable supremacy  which  the  organ  has 
established  for  itself  over  the  choir  and  ccn- 
!  gregation  :  we  are  convinced  that  if  the  words 
of  our  old  metrical  Psalmody  had  been  at 
all  worthy  of  their  subject,  they  would  have 
coerced  the  music  to  adapt  itself  accordingly  ; 
and  we  should  have  been  spared  the  incon- 
gruity of  the  poorest  and  most  prosaic,  as 
well  as  the  most  bombastic  lines  of  psalms 
and  hymns  being  made  a  conveyance  for  such 
tunes  as  Cambridge  New,  Devizes,  Ports- 
mouth, etc.  ;  if  indeed  such  tunes  would  ever 
have  come  into  existence. 

Who  could  endure  to  hear  and  sing  hymns, 
the  meaning  and  force  of  which  he  really  felt 
— set,  as  they  frequently  have  been,  to  mel- 
odies from  the  opera,  and  even  worse,  or 
massacred  by  the  repetition  of  the  end  of 
each  stanza,  no  matter  whether  or  not  the 
grammar  and  sense  were  consistent  with  it  ? 
— not  to  mention  the  memorable  cases  of — 

"  — My  poor  pol — 
—  My  poor  pol — 
—My  poor  polluted  heart ;  " 


and — 


—Our  Great  Sal— 

— Our  Great  Salvation  comes  !  " 


HYMNOLOGY. 


In  leaving  the  Hebrew  Psalms  and  Hymns 
we  make  a  great  stride,  passing  from  Jewish 
to  Christian  hymnology,  or,  to  speak  more 
accurately,  from  hymns  in  which  Christian- 
ity is  latent  under  prophecy  and  figure  to 
those  in  which  it  appears  as  a  present  fact. 
From  the  very  earliest  date,  after  the  day 
of  Pentecost,  we  find  the  Church  using  cer- 
tain anthems,  mostly,  as  we  might  expect, 
taken  from  Scripture,  and  forming,  together 
with  the  Canticles,  a  link  between  apostolic 
and  post-apostolic  times  ;  being  partly  in- 
spired, partly  uninspired  compositions.  They 
include  the  Tersanctus  or  Triumphal  Hymn — 

"  Holy,  Holy,  Holy," 
from  Isaiah  (6 :  3);  the  Benedicite,  or  Song 
of  the  Three  Children,  from  Daniel  (3  ;  see 
Ps.  148);  and  the  Angelic  Hymn, 

"  Glory  to  God  in  the  highest," 

from  St.  Luke  (2),  with  and  without  the 
additions,  as  in  our  Communion  Service, 
which  was  originally,  and  in  the  Greek 
Church  is  now,  used  as  an  ordinary  morning 
hymn  :  to  these  may  be  added  an  evening 
hymn  *  corresponding  to  this  last,  and  vari- 
ous forms  of  the  "  Gloria  Patri."  All,  but 
one,  of  these  have  been  adopted,  we  believe, 
universally  throughout  Christendom,  and  are 
to  be  found  in  all  the  languages  of  its  public 
worship.  But  for  the  treasures  of  post- 
apostolic  hymnology  we  must  carry  our 
search  into  the  various  collections  indigenous 
to  each  branch  of  the  Church ;  and  start- 
ing as  we  did  from  the  Holy  City,  we  find 
ourselves  first  in  that  country  the  metropo- 
litical  honors  of  which  she  now  shared  with 
Antioch,  and  whose  language  had  been  al- 
ready long  adopted  by  her  own  people  in  the 
place  of  their  native  Hebrew. 

2.  Syria  is  rich  in  hymns  ;  but  they  are  as 
yet  little  known  in  the  West,  and  we  are 
scarce  able  to  do  more  than  draw  attention 
to  their  existence.  The  metrical  writings 
of  the  father  of  Syriac  sacred  poetry,  St. 
Ephracm,  are  accessible  in  some  measure  tc 
English  readers  through  the  translations  of 
Dr.  Burgess  and  Mr.  Morris  ;  and  a  selec- 
tion from  the  Service-books  of  various  dio- 
ceses are  given  with  Latin  renderings  by 
Daniel  in  his  "  Thesaurus."  The  veil  is, 
therefore,  as  yet  only  partially  drawn  from 
them  ;  yet  as  it  discloses  many  hymns  of  ex- 

*"Lyra  Apostolica,"  p.  79,  ed.  185G;  and 
BinghuuVs  "  Origines,"  xiii.  11,  5. 


459 

cecding  beauty,  it  would  be  at  the  risk  of 

much   loss   that  we    should   neglect    them. 

Moreover,   we  cannot  forget  that  this  lan- 

1  guage  has,  in  all  matters  of  religion,  a  prime 

\  claim  to  our  attention  as  the  language  of  the 

chosen  people  at  the  time  of  our  Lord's  ap- 

I  pearing,  and  consequently  that  in  which  he 

!  spake  as  never  man  spake.     "  Ilac  lingua," 

1  says  Bishop  Beveridge  in  summing  up  its 

claims    to    our    study,    "  6o$okoyia   Angelica 

modulata  (utpote  pastoribus  intellecta) :  hac 

;  promissio    Spiritus   ct    vitse    eternte   facta ; 

hac  omnes  Christi  conciones  prrcdicata?  ;  hac 

I  Sacramenta  instituta  ;   hac  verba  Servatoris 

'  nostri   de   cruce   prolata ;  Verbo,  haec  Ipsi 

Christo  vernacula.     Quis  non  edisceret  ?  " 

It  is  a  remarkable  fact  in  the  history  of 
,  Christian  hymnology,  that  in  more  than  one 
case  the  first  incitement  to  hymn-writing 
among  the  orthodox  is  said  to  have  pro- 
ceeded from  the  heretical  communities  which 
had   separated   from   them.     It  was   so  in 
Syria.     A    certain    Bardesanes    of  Edessa, 
founder  of  a  school  of  Gnostics  at  the  end 
of  the   second  century,  seeking  a  popular 
means  of  spreading  his  heresy,  hit  upon  the 
experiment  of  hymns,   of  which  he   wrote 
near  two  hundred.     His  son  Harmonius,  a 
learned  musician,    followed   vigorously  his 
father's  leading,  and  by  the  middle  of  the 
fourth  century  the   pernicious  effects  upon 
the  orthodoxy  of  the  people  had  become  so 
:  manifest  that  Ephraem,  a  monk  and  deacon 
of  Edessa,  upon  the  maxim  that  "  fas  est  et 
1  ab  hoste  doceri,"  not  only  begun  to  write 
]  orthodox  hymns  to  counteract  the  influence 
'  of  his    opponents,  but,  turning  their  own 
\  weapons   upon  them,  he   set  them  to  the 
;  tunes    of    Harmonius ;    and    so    successful 
I  was  he  that  his  hymns  hold  their  place  to 
!  this  day,  while  those  of  his  adversary  are 
not.     "  The  Syrians,"  says  Asseman  (quoted 
by  Dr.    Burgess),   "attribute  to   Ephraem 
alone   twelve   thousand   songs ;    the    Copts 
'  fourteen  thousand."     So  much  for  quantity. 
Of  their  quality  it  may  be  said  that,  tried  by 
the  standard  of  Greeks,  Latins,  or  any  other 
'  that  we  know,  they  will  not  be  found  want- 
ing.    Dr.  Burgess  only  knows  of  two  hymns 
extant  of    a    date    previous    to    Ephraem  ; 
namely,  two  by  Simeon  Bishop  of  Scleuciain 
2(JG  ;  but  those  who  followed  him,  Balonus 
.  his  disciple,  Isaac  Magnus  at  the  close  of  the 
1  fourth  century,  and  Jacob  Bishop  of  Sarog 
;  in  519,  all  are  voluminous  metrical  writers, 


460 


HYMNOLOGY, 


either  of  hymns  or  homilies ;  for  these 
Eastern  teachers  poured  forth  their  very  ser- 
mons in  verse,  after  the  manner  of  their  in- 
spired predecessors  of  the  same  country,  the 
prophets  of  Judah  and  Israel.  Of  this  we 
have  a  noble  example,  now  within  reach  of 
English  readers  through  Dr.  Burgess'  trans- 
lation, the  "Repentance  of  Nineveh."  The 
originals,  though  not  these  translations,  are 
metrical.  The  following  is  an  Easter  Hymn 
of  St.  Ephraem  : — 

"  Blessed  be  the  Messiah, 
Who  hath  given  us  a  hope, 
That  the  dead  shall  live  ; 
And  hath  assured  our  race, 
That  when  it  hath  suffered  dissolution, 
It  shall  be  renewed. 

"Listen,  0  mortal  men, 
To  the  mystery  of  the  Resurrection  ; 
Which  was  once  concealed  ; 
Behold  it  is  now  proclaimed  abroad 
In  this  latter  age 
In  the  Holy  Church. 

"  For  Jesus  then  became 
A  sojourner  with  Death 
For  the  space  of  three  days, 
And  set  at  liberty  his  captives, 
And  laid  waste  his  encampment, 
And  returned  [the  spoils]  to  our  race. 

"  For  before  that  time 
Death  by  this  was  made  arrogant, 
And  boasted  himself  of  it : — 
'  Behold  priests  and  kings 
Lie  bound  by  me 
In  the  midst  of  my  prisons.' 

"  A  mighty  war 
Came  without  warning 
Against  the  tyrant  Death  ; 
And,  as  a  robber, 

The  shouts  [of  the  foe]  overtook  him, 
And  humbled  his  glory. 

"  The  dead  perceived 
A  sweet  savor  of  life 
In  tho  midst  of  Hades  ; 
And  they  began  to  spread  the  glad  tidings 
Among  one  another, 
That  their  hope  was  accomplished. 

"  From  the  beginning  [of  the  world] 
Deatli  had  dominion 
Over  mortal  men  : 
Until  there  arose 
The  Mighty  One 
And  abolished  his  pride. 

<*  His  voice  then  came, 
Like  heavy  thunder, 
Among  mortal  men  ; 
And  he  proclaimed  the  glad  tidings, 
That  they  were  set  at  liberty 

Froiii  their  bondage." 

— Burgess'  Syriac  Ilymns,  p.  77. 


There  is  a  decided  Orientalism  about  them, 
some  of  them  having  also  a  tendency  to  fall 
into  the  antithetic  parallelism  of  the  ancient 
Hebrews,  which  might  interfere  with  their 
being  transferred  into  Western  metre.  Some 
of  the  beautiful  sentiments  and  figurative 
expressions  of  the  Syriac  hymnographers 
have,  however,  tempted  us  to  try  a  metrical 
imitation  of  a  baptismal  hymn  from  the 
Office  used  at  Jerusalem  : — 

"  Glad  sight !  the  Holy  Church 
Spreads  forth  her  wings  of  love, 

To  welcome  to  her  breast  a  child, 
Begotten  from  above. 

"  Begotten  at  the  font 

By  God  the  Spirit's  power, 
A  gentle  lamb  from  Satan  snatched 

In  childhood's  helpless  hour. 

"  E'en  now  around  the  font, 

Unseen  by  mortal  eye, 
Britrht  ministering  angels  watch 
The  wondrous  mystery. 

"  There  to  receive  their  charge 

In  readiness  they  stand, 
And  long  to  guide  its  feeble  steps 

To  their  own  happy  land. 

"  And  all  the  host  of  heaven 

Rejoice  before  the  Lord, 
To  see  one  child  of  fallen  man 

A  child  of  God  restored. 

"  How  true  o'er  Jordan's  stream 
The  Baptist's  words  proclaim — 

'Behold,  One  greater  shall  baptize 
With  spirit  and  with  flame  !  ' 

"  Once  by  the  stream  discerned 
Were  Gideon's  chosen  band  ; 
Now  by  the  font  Christ  marks  his  own, 
Within  his  courts  to  stand. 

"Praise  him  who  made  ; — praise  him 

Who  did  redeem  our  race  ; 
Praise  him  who  us  doth  sanctify 

With  pure  baptismal  grace. 

Amen." — Dan.  iii.  226. 

Following  the  westward  course  of  Chris- 
tianity, we  shall  find  that  hymnology,  like  a 
wave  of  the  sea  swelling  up  in  its  wake, 
rolled  successively  through  each  country 
from  Judaea  to  the  Ultima  Thule  of  Britain, 
rising  to  its  height  in  each  only  when  it  was 
ebbing  away  in  the  last,  and  then  falling 
again  to  culminate  in  the  next. 

We  have  seen  that  in  Syria  its  golden  age 
was  about  the  fourth  century,  and  perhaps 
rather  later,  Ephraem  himself  living  till 
about  380. 

3.  Contemporary  with  him  flourished  the 


HVMNOLOGV. 


461 


earliest  Greek  hymn-writer,  St.  Gregory 
Nazianzen  ;  but  he  by  no  means  represents 
the  highest  attainments  of  Greek  hymnology, 
which  did  not  approach  its  zenith  till  the 
days  of  Andrew  Archbishop  of  Crete  (712)  ; 
St.  John  Damascene,  facile  princeps  (about 
750)  ;  his  contemporary,  St.  Cosmas  Bishop 
of  Maiuma ;  and  St.  Theodore  of  the  Stu- 
dium  (about  800).  The  magnificent  canons, 
or  long  hymns,  of  these  writers  are  the  glory 
of  the  Eastern  Church.  Their  compositions, 
together  with  those  of  other  more  volumi- 
nous writers  of  their  own  and  the  later  and 
waning  times  of  Greek  Church  poetry,  take 
up  nine-tenths  of  the  contents  of  the  sixteen 
large  double-columned  quarto  volumes  of 
Service-books  almost  wholly  to  themselves. 
But  this  immense  field  of  research  is  as  yet, 
like  the  last,  but  recently  explored  ;  and  all 
we  can  do  is  to  point  it  out  with  a  few  ob- 
servations culled  from  the  writings  of  the 
learned  Dr.  Neale,  the  chief  English  author- 
ity on  the  subject. 

Their  structure  has  been  well  designated 
"  harmonious  prose."  They  are  by  our 
standard  prodigiously  long ;  a  hymn  (or 
"  canon  ")  consisting  of  eight  odes,  and  each 
of  these,  again,  of  many  "  troparia "  or 
stanzas,  from  three  to  above  twenty.  Their 
character  varies  from  the  most  exalted  tri- 
umphal songs  to  the  most  prayerful  and  pen- 
itential aspirations.  Take,  for  example,  the 
first  verse  of  an  ode  which  has  found  its 
way  already  into  an  English  hymn-book 
from  a  Christmas  canon  of  St.  Cosmas  : — 

"  Christ  is  born  !  tell  forth  his  fame  ! 

Christ  from  heaven  !  Ins  love  proclaim  ! 

Christ  on  earth  !  exalt  his  name  ! 
Sing  to  the  Lord,  O  world,  with  exultation  ; 
Break  forth  in  glad  thanksgiving  every  nation, 

For  lie  hath  triumphed  gloriously  !  "  etc. 

Or  this,  the  celebrated  "  Hymn  of  Victory," 
sung  immediately  after  midnight  on  Easter 
morning,  during  the  symbolical  ceremony  of 
lighting  of  tapers  : — 

"'Tis  the  day  of  Resurrection  ! 

Earth,  tell  it  all  ahroad  ! 
The  Passover  of  gladness  ! 

The  Passover  of  God  ! 
From  death  to  life  eternal, 

From  earth  unto  the  sky  ! 
Our  Christ  hath  brought  us  over, 

With  hymns  of  victory  ! 

"  Our  hearts  he  pure  from  evil, 
That  we  may  see  aright 
The  Lord  in  rays  eternal 
Of  Resurrection-light ; 


And  listening  to  his  accents, 

May  hear  so  calm  and  plain, 
His  own  '  All  hail ! '  and  hearing, 

May  raise  the  victor  strain. 

"  Now  let  the  heavens  he  joyful ; 
Let  earth  her  song  hegin  ; 
Let  the  round  world  keep  triumph, 

And  all  that  is  therein  ! 
Invisible  or  visible, 

Their  notes  let  all  things  blend  ; 
For  Christ  the  Lord  hath  risen, 
Our  joy  that  hath  no  end." 

— St.  John  of  Damascus. 

Or  again,  this  of  St.  Andrew  of  Crete  : — 

"  Christian  !  dost  thou  see  them 

On  the  holy  ground, 
How  the  troops  of  Midian 

Prowl  and  prowl  around  ? 
Christian  !  up  and  smite  them, 

Counting  gain  but  loss  ; 
Smite  them  by  the  merit 

Of  the  Holy  Cross  ! 

"  Christian  !  dost  thou  feel  them, 

How  they  work  within  ; 
Striving,  tempting,  luring, 

Goading  into  sin  ? 
Christian  !  never  tremble  ! 

Never  be  downcast ! 
Smite  them  by  the  virtue 

Of  the  Lenten  Fast ! 

"  Christian  !  dost  thou  hear  them, 

How  they  speak  thee  fair  ? 
1  Always  fast  and  vigil  ? — 

Always  watch  and  prayer  ?  ' 
Christian  !  answer  boldly 

*  While  I  breathe  I  pray  : ' 
Peace  shall  follow  battle, 

Night  shall  end  in  day,"  etc. 

The  following  holds  a  middle  place  in  its 
tone,  but  is  an  excellent  example  of  the  an- 
tithetical style  of  many  ancient  hymns.  The 
translation  is  cast  in  the  prose  form  of  the 
original,  and  is  from  Dr.  Neale's  "  Commen- 
tary on  the  Psalms  :  " — 

"  They  cry  to  Him  for  strength, — and 
from  Ilim  that  was  wounded  to  the  death, 
and  weak  with  mortal  weakness  on  the  cross, 
they  obtain  might. 

"  They  cry  to  Him  for  wisdom, — and  from 
Him  that  condescended  to  the  ignorance  of 
childhood  they  receive  counsel  that  cannot 
fail. 

"They  cry  unto  Ilim  for  riches, — and  from 
Him  that  had  not  where  to  lay  His  head, 
that  was  born  in  the  poor  inn-manger,  and 
buried  in  a  given  grave,  they  receive  the 
pearl  of  great  price. 

"  They  cry  to  Him  for  joy, — and  from  the 
man  of  sorrows,  and  acquainted  with  grief, 
they  receive  the  pleasures  that  are  on  His 
right  hand  for  evermore." 


462  HYMNOLOGY. 

This  is  a  "  Kathisma"  (sitting),  or  inter- 
calated piece,  such  as  occurs  in  long  canons, 
when  the  people  are  allowed  to  sit.  We 
cannot  leave  the  Greek  hymns  without  in- 
troducing our  readers  to  the  "  King  of  Can- 
ons," as  it  is  called,  the  Great  Mid-Lent 
Canon   of   St.  Andrew   of  Crete.     But,  as 


available  in  verse,  they  had  to  burst  through 
the  barriers  of  the  old  classic  Latin  prosody, 
and  find  some  metre  in  which  such  indispen- 
sable Christian  words  as  "  Ecclesia,"  and 
many  Latin  words  hitherto  confined  to 
prose,  might  be  used  to  the  glory  of  God ; 
but  it  was  not  till  the  days  of  Venantius 
there  are  no  less  than  three  hundred  stanzas,  !  Fortunatus  (08O),  our  own  venerable  Bede, 


it  is  impossible  to  do  more  than  give  a  few 
from  the  first  Ode : — 

"  Whence  shall  my  tears  begin  1 

What  first-fruits  shall  I  bear 

Of  earnest  sorrow  for  my  sin  ? 

Or  how  my  woe  declare? 
0  thou  !  the* Merciful  and  Gracious  One, 
Forgive  the  foul  transgressions  I  have  done. 

"  With  Adam  I  have  vied, 

Yea  !  passed  him,  in  my  fall ; 
And  I  am  naked  now,  by  pride 

And  lust  made  bare  of  all — 
Of  thee,  0  God  !  and  that  celestial  band, 
And  all  the  glory  of  the  Promised  Land. 

"  No  earthly  Eve  beguiled 
My  body  into  sin  : 
A  spiritual  temptress  smiled, 

Concupiscence  within. 
Unbridled  passion  grasped  the  unhallowed 

sweet : 
Most  bitter — ever  bitter — was  the  meat. 

"  If  Adam's  righteous  doom, 
Because  he  dared  transgress 
Thy  one  decree,  lost  Eden's  bloom 

And  Eden's  loveliness, 
What  recompense,  O  Lord  !  must  I  expect, 
Who  all  my  life  thy  quickening  laws  neg- 
lect," etc. 

If  we  might  venture,  upon  a  very  short 
acquaintance,  to  name  the  characteristics 
of  these  canons,  we  should  say  richness 
and  repose,  and  a  continuous  thread  of  Holy 
Scripture,  especially  types,  woven  into  them. 
But  we  must  move  again  westward,  for  with 
St.  Joseph  of  the  Studium  (830),  the  most 
prolific  of  all,  the  "  Watts  of  Greece,"  as  he 
has  been  called,  the  full  tide  of  hymnologi- 
cal  power  was  going  down-,  in  the  East, 
while  in  the  Latin  Church  it  was  fast  rising 
to  its  future  magnificence. 

4.  While  Cosmas  and  his  brethren  were 
chanting  with  ease  in  the  language  from 
which  the  Church  had  from  the  first  accepted 


and  other  still  greater  masters  of  the 
eighth  and  ninth -centuries,  that  the  new 
wine  of  Christianity,  having  "  burst  the  old 
bottles,"  says  Dean  Trench,  "  was  gathered 
into  nobler  chalices,  vessels  more  fit  to  con- 
tain it,"  than  the  artificial  measures  of  quan- 
tity and  feet.  After  the  invention  of  what 
may  be  called  Church  metres  (ruled  by  ac- 
cent) and  the  introduction  of  rhymes,  the 
flood  of  sacred  Latin  poetry  mounted  stead- 
ily to  its  height,  lifting  up  with  it,  for  the  ad- 
miration of  all  ages,  the  names  of  St.  Peter 
Damian,  St.  Bernard  of  Clairvaux,  and  his 
uncanonized  namesake  Bernard  the  monk 
of  Clugny,  Hildebert,  Archbishop  of  Tours, 
St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  and  Adam  of  St.  Vic- 
tor, and  the  works  of  many  more,  whose 
names  are  lost  to  us  ;  for  it  is  a  curious  fact 
that,  whereas  in  the  East  the  names  of  the 
authors  have  been  almost  universally  pre- 
served with  their  hymns  in  the  Service- 
books,  the  Western  hymns  whose  authors 
are  known  are  the  exception.  The  wonder- 
ful sequence  attributed  to  Thomas  of  Celano, 
"  Dies  irse,  dies  ilia,"  "  the  most  sublime  " — 
we  give  the  epithets  accorded  by  Dr.  Neale 
— the  "  Stabat  Mater  Dolorosa  "  (attributed 
to  Jacopone),  the  "  most  pathetic,"  and  that 
"  most  lovely  "  poem  of  the  Clugniac  monk, 
so  marvellously  sustained  through  three 
thousand  lines  of  rhymed  dactylic  hexame- 
ters, e.  g. 

"  Hie  breve  vivitur,   hie  breve  plangitur,  hie 

breve  fletur, 
Non  breve  vivere,  non  breve  plangere,  retri- 

buetur," — 

are  all  so  well  known  through  the  transla- 
tions  respectively  of  Dr.  Irons,  Mr.  Cas- 
wall,  and  Mr.  Neale,  that  we   need  only* 
mark  down,  for  those  who  are  not  "  Latin- 
ers,"  the  first  lines  of  each  to  remind  them 


her  vocabulary,  the  first  fathers  of  Latin 
hymnography,  St.  Ambrose,  S.  Hilary,  Pru-  j  of  these  old-established  favorites  : — 
dentius,  and  St.  Gregory,  had  been  strug- 
gling with  the  difficulty  of  composing  in  a 
language  upon  which  these  Greek  words  had 
to  be  grafted  de  novo.     To  make  such  words  I 


"  Day  of  wrath,  0  day  of  mourning." 

"  By  the  cross  her  station  keeping, 
Stood  the  mournful  mother  weeping.' 


And 

"Brief  life  is  here  our  portion." 

"  To  thee,  O  dear  country." 

"  Jerusalem  the  golden." 
All  the  last  three  being  from  different  por- 
tions of  the  monk's  poem. 

The  hymn  of  King  Robert  the  Pious,  of 
France,  -which  seems  to  be  considered  by 
Dean  Trench  to  contest  the  palm  of  loveli- 
ness with  the  last,  is  less  known,  and  de- 
serves full  notice : — 

"  Come,  thou  Holy  Spirit !  come  ; 
And,  from  thine  eternal  home, 

Shed  the  ray  of  light  divine  ; 
Come,  thou  Father  of  the  poor  ! 
Come,  thou  Source  of  all  our  store  ! 

Come,  within  our  bosom  shine. 

"  Thou  of  Comforters  the  best ! 
Thou  the  soul's  most  welcome  Guest  ! 

Sweet  Refreshment  here  below  ! 
In  our  labor  rest  most  sweet, 
Grateful  shadow  from  the  heat, 

Solace  in  the  midst  of  woe  ! 

"  O  most  blessed  Light  Divine  ! 
Shine  within  these  hearts  of  thine, 

And  our  inmost  being  fill. 
If  thou  take  thy  grace  away, 
Nothing  pure  in  man  will  stay, 

All  our  good  is  turned  to  ill. 

"  Heal  our  wounds  ;  our  strength  renew  ; 
On  our  dryness  pour  thy  new  ; 

Wash  the  stains  of  guilt  away  : 
Bend  the  stubborn  heart  and  will, 
Melt  the  frozen,  warm  the  chill, 

Guide  the  steps  that  go  astray. 

"  On  the  faithful,  who  adore 
And  confess  thee,  evermore 

In  thy  sevenfold  gifts  descend  ; 
Give  them  virtue's  sure  reward, 
Give  them  thy  salvation,  Lord, 
Give  them  joys  that  never  end.    Amen." 
— Hymns  Ancient  and  Modern. 

Of  hymns  and  sequences  together  the 
Latin  Churches  have  an  immense  store.  Not 
only  have  the  Roman  Breviary,  Missal,  etc., 
their  full  complement  of  them,  but  the  nu- 
merous peculiar  "  uses  "  of  different  dioceses 
in  France,  Germany,  Spain,  Italy,  and  Eng- 
land, afford  a  large  additional  number — 
some  of  very  great  beauty. 

It  is  not  so  much  our  object  to  introduce 
the  reader  to  the  poetry  of  these  hymns,  as 
to  suggest  an  inquiry  into  their  fitness  for 
our  English  services.  For  this  purpose  the 
plain,  simple  Christian  songs  of  unpolished 
versifiers,  deeply  imbued  with  religious  feel- 
ing, serve  often  far  better  than  really  beauti- 


HYMNOLOGY.  4Go 

i  ful  poetry  ;  and  it  has  been  truly  said  by 
J  John  Newton  that  there  is  that  in  hymns 
which  comes  more  readily  from  the  verse- 
writer  than  the  poet.  It  is  necessary  to 
bear  this  in  mind  in  judging  of  the  few 
hymns  that  follow. 

The  chief  value  of  the  Latin  hymns,  as  a 
source  whence  we  may  supply  our  need,  con- 
sists in  the  narrative  hymns,  a  class  in  which 
we  are  singularly  deficient.  "  We  cannot 
estimate  fully  the  effect  of  the  narrative 
hymns  in  keeping  up  a  knowledge  of  the 
facts  of  Christianity  among  the  people 
through  the  middle  ages."  *  Happy  would  it 
be  for  England  if  this  "knowledge  of  the 
facts  "  was  not  still  sadly  lacking  among  her 
poor,  and  among  others  too  who  have  not  the 
plea  of  poverty  to  excuse  their  ignorance. 
But  it  is  so,  in  spite  of  national  schools  and 
Government  grants  ;  and  good  men  have  in 
consequence  hailed  with  delight  the  transla- 
tion and  adoption  of  the  narrative  hymns  of 
old,  hoping  to  combine  with  the  grateful 
praising  of  God  for  his  dealings  with  man  a 
more  intimate  knowledge  and  appreciation 
of  those*  dealings  in  the  worshippers. 

The  following  verses  from  the  "  Pange 
Lingua  Gloriosi "  of  Venantius  Fortunatus, 
as  they  appear  in  some  of  our  modern  hymn- 
books,  are  a  good  specimen  of  a  narrative 
hymn,  the  original  being  placed  in  the  "first 
class"  by  Dr.  Neale  : — 

"  Sing,  my  tongue,  the  Saviour's  glory  ; 

Tell  his  triumph  far  and  wide  ; 
Tell  aloud  the  wondrous  story 

Of  his  body  cruciiied  ; 
How  upon  the  cross  a  victim 

Vanquishing  in  death  he  died. 

"  Eating  of  the  tree  forbidden 

Man  had  fallen  by  Satan's  snare, 

When  our  pitying  Creator 
Did  this  second  tree  prepare, 

Destined  many  ages  later 
That  first  evil  to  repair. 

"  So  when  now  at  length  the  fulness 
Of  the  time  foretold  drew  nigh, 

Then  the  Son,  the  world's  Creator, 
Left  his  Father's  throne  on  high, 

From  a  Virgin's  womb  appearing, 
Clothed  in  our  mortality. 

"Thus  did  Christ  to  perfect  manhood 
In  our  mortal  flesh  attain, 
Then  of  his  free  choice  he  goeth 

To  a  death  of  hitter  pain  ; 
He,  tin'  Lamb  upon  the  altar 
Of  the  cross,  lor  us  i-.  ilain. 

*  "  Christian  Life  in  Song." 


464 


HYMNOLOGY, 


"Lo  !  with  gall  his  thirst  he  quenches  ; 

See  the  thorns  upon  his  brow ; 
Nails  his  hands  and  feet  are  rending, 

See  his  side  is  open  now  ! 
Whence,  to  cleanse  the  whole  creation, 

Streams  of  blood  and  water  flow. 

"  Blessing,  honor  everlasting, 

To  the  immortal  Deity  ; 
To  the  Father,  Son,  and  Spirit 

Equal  praises  ever  be  ; 
Glory  through  the  earth  and  heaven 

To  the  blessed  Trinity.     Amen." 

The  next,  from  the  Paris  Breviary,  is  a 
beautiful  Christmas  hymn,  narrating  the 
scene  at  Bethlehem  : — 

"Jam  desinant  suspiria." 

"  God  from  on  high  hath  heard  : 

Let  sighs  and  sorrow  cease ; 
Lo  !  from  the  opening  heaven  descends 

To  man  the  Promised  Peace. 

"  Hark,  through  the  silent  night 

Angelic  voices  swell ; 
Their  joyful  songs  proclaim  that  '  God 

Is  born  on  earth  to  dwell. 

"  See  how  the  shepherd-band 

Speed  on  with  eager  feet ! 
Come  to  the  hallowed  cave  with  them 

The  holy  Babe  to  greet.  • 

"But  oh  !  what  sight  appears 

Within  that  lowly  door  ! 
A  manger,  stall,  a*nd  swaddling-clothes, 

A  Child  and  Mother  poor  ! 

"  Art  thou  the  Christ  ?  the  Son  ? 

The  Father's  Image  bright  ? 
And  see  we  him  whose  arm  upholds 

Earth  and  the  starry  height  ? 

"  Yea  !  faith  can  pierce  the  cloud 

Which  veils  thy  glory  now  ; 
We  hail  thee  God,  before  whose  throne 

The  angels  prostrate  bow. 

"A  silent  teacher,  Lord, 

Thou  bidd'st  us  not  refuse 
To  bear  what  flesh  would  have  us  shun, 

To  shun  what  flesh  would  choose. 

"  Our  swelling  pride  to  cure 

With  that  pure  love  of  thine, 
Oh,  be  thou  born  within  our  hearts, 

Most  holy  Child  Divine  !     Amen." 

— Hymns  Ancient  and  Modern. 

Not  even  the  most  stirring  experimental 
hymn  could  be  more,  if  so  much,  to  edifica- 
tion, or  more  expressive  of  thankful  praise, 
than  these  touching  renderings  of  the  Bible 
story. 

Let  us  give  one  more  example  ;  not  a  nar- 
rative, but  a  meditative  hymn,  from  the  com- 
mencement of  the  long  poem  of  St.  Bernard, 
"  Jesu,   dulcis   memoria,"   of  which    Dean 


Trench  observes  that  it  is,  "  of  all  his  poems, 
the  most  eminently  characteristic  of  its  au- 
thor ;  "  it  is  found  as  a  hymn  in  the  Sarum 
Breviary,  "  On  the  Feast  of  the  Name  of 

Jesus  :  " — 

"  Jesu  !  the  very  thought  of  thee 
With  sweetness  fills  the  breast ; 
But  sweeter  far  thy  face  to  see, 
And  in  thy  presence  rest. 

"  No  voice  can  sing,  no  heart  can  frame, 
Nor  can  the  memory  find, 
A  sweeter  sound  than  Jesu's  name, 
The  Saviour  of  mankind. 

"  O  Hope  of  every  contrite  heart ! 
O  Joy  of  all  the  meek  ! 
To  those  who  fall  how  kind  thou  art ! 
How  good  to  those  who  seek  ! 

"But  what  to  those  who  find  ?    Ah  !  this 
No  tongue  nor  pen  can  show  ; 
The  love  of  Jesus,  what  it  is, 
None  but  his  loved  ones  know,"  etc.,  etc. 
— Hymns  Ancient  and  Modern. 

The  Latin  hymns  are,  then,  of  that  very 
character  which  is  so  rare  in  our  English 
collections  ;  they  include  a  greater  variety 
of  subjects  and  modes  of  handling  them  than 
those  of  other  nations  ;  perhaps  because  their 
growth  extended  over  a  longer  period — more 
than  a  thousand  years — and  over  a  larger 
area  ;  and  because,  as  is  probable,  they  were 
the  work  of  a  greater  number  of  writers  ;  to 
them,  too,  belong  the  hymns  which  adorned 
the  Old  English  Service-books,  and  in  which 
our  forefathers  for  many  generations  found 
a  channel  for  their  praises  ;  and  hence,  prob- 
ably, in  them  we  find  a  greater  harmony  in 
tone  and  language  with  our  present  prayers, 
which  owe  their  origin  to  the  same  books. 
Further,  if  our  Church  may  be  said  to  have 
pointed  out  any  source  from  which  her  chil- 
dren should  look  for  hymns,  it  is  this  ;  for 
the  only  hymn  in  metre  which  bears  her  au- 
thority is  the  "  Veni  Creator  "  in  the  Ordi- 
nation Service. 

But  our  course  now  brings  us  to  the  de- 
cline of  Latin  sacred  poetry,  and  we  must 
be  passing  on  to  other  peoples  and  lan- 
guages. 

One  of  the  accompanying  marks  of  corrup- 
tion in  the  Court  and  Church  of  Rome  and 
its  dependencies  was  a  return  in  art  and  lit- 
erature— hymns  not  excepted — to  the  "  slav- 
ish bondage  of  a  revived  paganism."  *  Not 
only  did  hymn-writers  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury strive  to  write  classical  hymns,  in  imi- 
*  Neale. 


tation  of  Horace  and  his  contemporaries,  but 
the  Roman  authorities,  with  Leo  X.  at  their 
head,  set  to  work  to  reform,  "  or  rather," 
says  one  writer,  "  to  deform,"  the  old  hymns 
upon  the  same  artificial  model :  and  in  the 
next  century  the  vain  and  worldly  prince 
Pope  Urban  VIII.  was  so  eaten  up  with  his 
classical  and  poetical  attainments,  that,  not 
content  with  carrying  on  the  follies  of  his 
predecessors,  he  attempted  to  remodel,  in 
Horatian  metres,  even  the  songs  and  apoph- 
thegms of  the  Bible,  actually  "  forcing  the 
song  of  praise  of  the  aged  Simeon  into  two 
Sapphic  strophes  !  " — llanke,  vol.  ii.,  p.  128. 
5.  From  such  doings  one  is  glad  to  be 
able  to  turn  at  this  period  to  the  honest, 
hearty,  and  real,  if  not  over-delicate,  out- 
bursts of  Luther's  muse  in  Germany.  Yet, 
after  all,  the  transition  is  not  very  abrupt ; 
for,  although  Germany  (as  also  England)  in 
the  sixteenth  century  threw  off  with  the  Pa- 
pal yoke  the  Roman  Latin  hymns,  yet  their 
leader,  unlike  the  English  reformers,  applied 
himself  at  once  to  reproduce  them  in  his  na- 
tive tongue  ;  feeling,  perhaps,  that  a  musical 
nation  must  not  be  kept  without  musical  ex- 
pression for  their  religious  sentiments,  and 
that  the  old  familiar  melodies  would  carry 
their  affections  into  the  scale  of  reformation 
better  than  any  new  compositions.  And  so 
gradual  and  partial  was  the  transfer  of  the 
Latin  hymns  into  German,  that  there  remain 
to  this  day  several  translated  hymns  and 
carols  retaining  their  refrain,  and  sometimes 
interspersed  lines  and  words,  in  the  original 
Latin,  as,  for  example  : — 

"  In  dulci  jubilo 
Nun  singet  und  seyd  fro, 
Unsers  Herzen  wonne 
Ligt  in  prcesepio, 
Und  leuchtet  als  die  onne 
Matris  ingremio. 
Alpha  es  et  0, 
Alpha  es  et  0,"  etc.,  etc. 

The  consequence  of  this  is  seen  in  a  com- 
parative scarcity  of  native  German  hymns 
written  in  the  early  period  of  the  Reforma- 
tion. Luther  himself,  however,  besides 
translating  or  imitating  the  Latin  hymns, 
some  of  the  Psalms,  the  Te  Deum,  Lord's 
Prayer,  etc.,  wrote  several  original  hymns. 
The  most  notable  of  his  paraphrases  is  that 
of  the  46th  Psalm,  a  rough,  bold  piece,  which, 
with  its  glorious  chorale,  *  is  still   the  na- 

*  No.  381  in  Mr.  Mercer's  book,  where  it  is  di- 
vorced from  its  proper  words,  of  which  a  transla- 
tion is  given  in  the  "  Lyra  Germanics,"  i.  176. 
THIRD  SERIES.  LIVING  AGE.         876 


HYMNOLOGY.  465 

j  tional  hymn  of  German  Protestants.  A  se- 
quence of  Notker  (912),  translated  by  Lu- 
ther, *  has  an  interest  for  us,  as  being  used 
in  English  in  our  Burial  Service  ;  ajid  we 
t  must  not  omit  all  mention  of  his  original  and 
striking  hymn  for  Easter,  "  Christ  lag  in 
!  Todesbaden."  f 

From  Luther  till  the  seventeenth  century 
■  Paul  Eber  and  Nicholas  Hermann  were  the 
'•  only  memorable  writers ;  but  then  the  pent-up 
1  stream,  agitated  and  driven  onward  by  the 
storm  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War,  rose  rapidly 
!  to    an  overwhelming  flood,  of  which   Miss 
Winkworth's  two  goodly  volumes  are  but  a 
few  drops.     The  most  celebrated  hymnogra- 
phers  of  Germany  are,    during   the    seven- 
teenth century,  Heermann,  Rist,  Paul  Ger- 
hardt,  Angelus,  Joachim  Neander ;  and,  in 
the  eighteenth,  Tersteegen  and  Franck. 

The  translations  of  Miss  Winkworth  are 

now  in  every  one's  hands,  and,  together  with 

1  those  of  her  precursors,  Miss  Cox  and  Mr. 

I  Massie,  have  made  German  sacred  poetry  so 

j  familiar  to  English  people  that  it  is  almost 

!  superfluous  to  give  at  length  any  examples, 

J  except  by  way  of  comparison  with  the  Latin 

I  and   other  foreign  hymnology.     The  chief 

characteristic  of  the  earlier  German  hymns 

!  is  a  certain  energy  of  expression,  the  impress, 

!  probably,  of  the  rough  and  turbulent  times 

in  which  they  were  written  :  this  is  especially 

j  marked  in  Luther  and  in  Von  Lowenstern, 

and  others  who  bore  the  brunt  of  the  relig- 

I  ious  wars.     The  following  is  said  to  be  by 

Louisa  Henrietta,  Electress  of  Brandenburgh 

in  1635,  and  is  a  general  favorite  : — 

"  Jesus  lives  !  no  longer  now 

Can  thy  terrors,  Death,  appall  us  ; 
Jesus  lives  !  by  this  we  know 

Thou,  O  Grave,  canst  not  enthrall  us. 
Alleluia  ! 

"  Jesus  lives  !  henceforth  is  death 
But  the  gate  of  Life  immortal  ; 
This  shall  calm  our  trembling  breath 

When  we  pass  its  gloomy  portal. 
Alleluia  ! 

"  Jesus  lives  !  for  us  he  died  : 
Then,  alone  to  Jesus  living, 
Pure  in  heart  may  we  abide, 
Glory  to  our  Saviour  giving. 
Alleluia  ! 

"  Jesus  lives  !  our  hearts  know  well 
Naught  from  us  his  love  shall  sever: 
Life,  nor  death,  nor  powers  of  hell, 
Tear  us  from  his  keeping  ever. 
Alleluia! 

*  "  Lyra  Gcrrr.anica,"  i.  237.        f  Ibid.,  i.  87. 


466 


HYMNOLOGY. 


"  Jesus  lives  !  to  him  the  throne 
Over  all  the  world  is  given  : 
May  we  go  where  he  is  gone, 
Rest  and  reign  with  him  in  heaven. 
Alleluia  ! 

"  Praise  the  Father  ;  praise  the  Son, 
Who  to  us  new  life  hath  given ; 
Praise  the  Spirit,  Three  in  One, 
All  in  earth,  and  all  in  heaven. 

Alleluia !     Amen." 
— Hymns  Ancient  and  Modern. 

This  hymn,  too,  which  is  said  by  Miss 
Winkworth  to  "  hold  the  same  place  in 
Germany  that  the  Hundredth  Psalm  does 
with  us,"  takes  one  by  storm  with  its  buoy- 
ant joyfulness,  and  excites  a  strong  desire 
to  hear  it  sung  to  "  its  fine  old  tune  :  "  * — 

"  Now  thank  we  all  our  God, 
With  hearts  and  hands  and  voices, 

Who  wondrous  things  have  done, 
In  whom  his  world  rejoices  ! 

Who  from  our  mothers'  arms 

Hath  blessed  us  on  our  way 

With  countless  gifts  of  love, 

And  still  is  ours  to-day. 

"  Oh  !  may  this  bounteous  God 
Through  all  our  life  be  near  us, 

With  ever  joyful  hearts, 
And  blessed  peace  to  cheer  us, 

And  keep  us  in  his  grace, 

And  guide  us  when  perplexed, 

And  free  us  from  all  ill, 

In  this  world  and  the  next. 

"  All  praise  and  thanks  to  God, 

The  Father,  now  be  given, 
The  Son,  and  him  who  reigns 

With  them  in  highest  heaven, 
The  One  Eternal  God, 
Whom  earth  and  heaven  adore, 
For  thus  it  was,  is  now, 
And  shall  be  evermore.     Amen." 

— Hymns  Ancient  and  Modern. 

It  is  observable  that,  as  the  time  ap- 
proaches when  in  any  nation  the  sacred 
muse  is  to  depart,  a  tendency  to  personal, 
meditative,  subjective  writing  begins  to 
show  itself ;  the  truth  of  this  with  the  Lat- 
ins is  recorded  incidentally  by  Mr.  Neale, 
and  Miss  Winkworth  bears  witness  to  the 
same  at  the  present  day  in  Germany.  It 
began  there  as  far  back  as  the  close  of  the 
seventeenth  century  with  Johann  Franck 
and  Angelus,  and  was  a  distinguishing  mark 
of  that  inimitable  writer  Tersteegen  ;  this 
school  is  well  represented  in  the  second  vol- 
ume of  the  "  Lyra  Germanica,"  from  which 
the  following  by  Angelus,  is  taken  : — 

*  Lyra  Germanica,"  ii.  preface,  p.  G. 


"  0  Love,  who  formedst  me  to  wear 
The  image  of  thy  Godhead  here  ; 
Who  soughtest  me  with  tender  care 
Through  all  my  wanderings  wild  and  drear ; 

O  Love,  I  give  myself  to  thee, 

Thine  ever,  only  thine  to  be." 

It  would  be  an  omission  to  pass  unno- 
ticed a  collection  of  German  hymns,  ema- 
nating from  a  body  whose  influence  had  so 
great  a  'share  in  exciting  the  Wesleyan 
movement  in  England,  and  especially  in 
moulding  its  hymnology,  as  the  Moravians 
or  Unitas  Fratrum.  It  was  while  sailing  to 
America  in  1736  that  Wesley  first  fell  in 
with  some  members  of  this  community ; 
two  years  afterwards  he  spent  some  time  in 
Germany  under  the  roof  of  their  leader, 
Count  Zinzendorf,  himself  a  hymn-writer. 
Deeply  impressed  with  Jheir  piety,  he  was 
the  means  in  return  of  introducing  them 
into  England.  Mr.  William  Burgess  traces 
twenty-four  of  John  Wesley's  translations 
to  Moravian  and  other  German  sources.  If 
any  of  our  readers  have  a  taste  for  the  curi- 
ous, we  can  promise  them  a  treat  in  an  old 
book,  published  in  1754,  by  one  of  the  so- 
called  Bishops  of  the  Moravians  in  England, 
entitled  "A  Collection  of  Hymns  of  the 
Children  of  God  in  all  Ages."  It  includes, 
among  many  eccentricities,  a  versification 
of  our  XXXIX  Articles  ! 

Doubtless  there  is  much  to  interest  any 
one  who  should  trace  the  subject  of  hymns 
through  the  Asiatic  branches,  springing 
from  the  Syriac ;  and  we  know  that  the 
Greek  hymnologists  have  their  successors  in 
Russia  even  to  this  day  :  witness  the  Canon 
by  the  late  Archbishop  of  Odessa  in  his 
"  Acathiston,"  translated  in  "Voices  from 
the  East."  By  far  the  richest  treasures  of 
Latin  hymnology  are  found,  not  in  the 
Homan  Service-books,  but  in  the  outlying 
provincial  and  diocesan  Breviaries,  the  Am- 
brosian  (Milan),  the  Mozarabic  (Old  Span- 
j  ish),  the  Gallican  and  German,  as  those  of 
I  Amiens,  Noyon,  Maintz,  Liege,  the  Old 
'English  "Uses  "of  Salisbury,  York,  Here- 
ford, and  very  many  more.  The  author  of 
"Christian  Life  in  Song"  conducts  his 
readers  from  Germany  to  her  Lutheran  off- 
shoot in  Sweden,  and  there  introduces  them 
to  the  original  of  Gustavus  Adolphus'  battle- 
hymn,  composed  on  the  field  of  Liitzen — 
known  better  through  its  German  transla- 
tion of  Altenburg  (unless,  as  is  sometimes 


HYMNOLOGY. 


held,  this  is  the  original),  and  to  us  through 
the  English  of  Miss  Wink-worth — 

"  Fear  not,  0  little  flock,  the  foe  ;  " 
and  to  two  hymns,  not  without  considerable 
merit,  one  by  Spegel,  Archbishop  of  Upsala, 
1714,  the  other  by  Franzen,  Bishop  of  Iler- 
nosand,  1818.  The  author  tells  also  of  a 
"fresh  stream  of  song"  now  flowing  in 
Sweden  "  in  a  language  which  combines  the 
homely  strength  of  the  German  with  the 
liquid  music  of  the  Italian."  But  to  pro- 
ceed on  our  course. 

In  the  rise  of  English  hymns  we  find  a 
remarkable  illustration  of  the  difference  of 
character  between  the  German  Reformation 
and  our  own.  In  Germany  the  whole  move- 
ment came  from  the  middle  and  lower 
classes,  and  was  only  afterwards  taken  up 
by  secular  princes,  and  not  at  all  by  the 
hierarchy :  consequently,  its  leaders  had 
to  assume  the  guidance  and  furtherance  of 
it  as  best  they  could,  and  to  make  way  with 
weapons  of  their  own  making  :  and  one  of 
the  most  obvious  means  of  grafting  their 
doctrines  on  the  masses  was  by  giving  them 
ready  formulas  in  hymns.  In  our  case,  on 
the  contrary,  royal  and  political  difficulties 
first  blew  into  a  flame  the  smouldering  dis- 
content ;  kings,  therefore,  and  chancellors, 
archbishops  and  bishops,  were  its  ruling 
agents :  the  people's  grievances  were  con- 
sidered, but  their  support  and  their  consent 
were  not  needed ;  their  feelings,  therefore, 
were  checked  rather  than  roused,  and  very 
little  was  done  for  them  at  first  beyond  giv- 
ing them  the  prayers  and  lessons  in  English. 
This,  instead  of  increasing,  rather  dimin- 
ished the  popular  element  in  public  wor- 
ship, as  it  took  away  the  Latin  hymns  and 
did  not  replace  them  by  others.  Why  they 
were  not  translated  Avith  the  prayers — 
whether  because  there  were  no  poets  (Stern- 
hold  and  Hopkins  forgive  us  !),  or  because 
questions  of  doctrine  and  discipline  en- 
grossed all  attention,  or  whether  hymns 
were  thought  of  no  consequence,  we  cannot 
tell.  This,  however,  is  clear,  that,  the  old 
channels  of  devotional  poetry  being  shut 
off  with  the  Latin  hymns,  our  forefathers 
were  left  stranded,  if  we  may  so  say,  on  the 
dry  land  of  prose  ;  and  patiently  they  seem 
to  have  borne  it.  Cranmer  gave  up,  and  no 
one  else  undertook,  the  task  of  translating 
the  old  hymns ;  and  it  was  well  left  undone, 
if  we    may  judge   from    the    specimens    of 


467 

translations  made  at  the  period,  and  found 
in  the  Primers  of  1545  and  1559,  from  the 
latter  of  which  the  following  Morning 
Hymn  is  taken  : — 

"  Ales  diet  nuntius. 
"  The  bird  of  day  Messenger 

Crowcth,  and  showeth  that  light  is  near. 

(Mirier  the  stirrer  of  the  heart 

"Would  we  should  to  life  convert. 
"  Upon  Jesus  let  us  cry, 

Weeping,  praying,  soherly, 

Devout  prayer  ment  [mixed]  with  weep 

Suft'ereth  not  our  heart  to  sleep. 

"  Christ  shake  off  our  heavy  sleep, 
Break  the  bonds  of  night  so  deep, 
Our  old  sins  cleanse  and  scour, 
Life  and  grace  into  us  pour.     Amen." 

It  appears,  then,  that  even  if  unlicensed 
singing  was  used — and  some  think  it  was — 
during  the  reigns  of  Henry  VIII.  and  Ed- 
ward VI.,  it  was  to  a  very  trifling  extent; 
and  at  any  rate,  those  who  might  refuse 
to  indulge  their  love  of  singing  at  the  ex- 
pense of  obedience  were  left  without  hymns 
till  the  reign  of  Elizabeth.  And  even  then 
they  obtained  only  a  metrical  version  of  the 
Psalms  of  David,  by  Sternhold,  Hopkins, 
and  others,  which  was  published  in  1.562, 
and  received  the  permissive  authorization 
of  the  Queen.  The  qualifications  of  Stern- 
hold  for  the  task — which,  considering  his 
times,  were  not  to  be  despised,  including, 
as  they  did,  a  knowledge  of  the  original 
Hebrew — are  rather  surprising  in  a  Groom 
of  the  King's  Bedchamber  ;  yet  at  the  same 
time,  or  perhaps  rather  earlier,  Clement 
Marot,  holding  a  corresponding  office  in 
the  court  of  Francis  L,  executed  a  similar 
work  in  French. 

After  this  first  attempt  to  versify  the 
Psalms,  for  a  very  long  period  all  the  ener- 
gies of  England's  sacred  poets  seem  to  have 
been  expended  upon  a  succession  of  new 
versions.  Archbishop  Matthew  Park 
within  ten  years  printed  his,  but  it  was 
never  published.  The  versatile  King  James 
L*  was  found  at  his  death  to  have  versified 
the  whole  Psalter,  and  his  son  Charles  pub- 
lished and  authorized  it  for  use  :  Sir  Philip 
Sidney  and  his  sister  the  Counters  of  Pem- 
broke—  about  1580 j  Francis  Rouse*  m 
Kill  ;  William  Barton  *  in  1664  :  Tate  and 
Brady  "  in  L686  ;  Dr.  Patrick  in  1715  J  Dr. 
Watts  in  1719;  id  Blaekmore  ■  in 

*  r, 
with  an  uteris!  have  1 o  bj  tome  soil  of  author- 
ity •*  allowed  to  be  need  in  ennrchi 


468  HYMNOLOGY. 

1721  ;  Archdeacon  Churton  ("  the  Cleve- 
land Psalter  ")  ;  two  anonymous  translators 
— one  in  Oxford,*  the  other  in  Cambridge — 
and  Mr.  Cayley,  among  living  writers,  and 
others,  to  the  number  of  thirty-two  in  all, 
have  taken  in  hand  the  task — confessed  by 
more  than  one  of  them  at  the  outset  to  be 
impossible  —  of  making  an  entire  metrical 
Psalter.  Besides  these,  the  attempts,  many 
of  them  very  successful,  to  versify  detached 
Psalms,  are  beyond  number,  f 

But  to  return,  in  search  of  original  hymn- 
writers  or  translators  of  hymns  ;  one  of 
Sternhold's  coadjutors,  John  Mardley  (others 
say  Sternhold  himself,  "  in  a  moment  of  un- 
usual inspiration  "),  wrote  the  well-known 
"  Lamentation  of  a  Sinner,"  generally 
printed  with  the  Old  and  New  Versions. 
The  metrical  Psalms,  however,  seem  to 
have  monopolized  all  the  talent  for  hym- 
nography  during  Elizabeth's  reign  ;  for  in 
a  Collection  of  Sacred  Poetry  of  that  time, 
published  by  the  Parker  Society,  there  are 
very  few  other  pieces  written  for  singing, 
and  none  of  them  calling  for  special  notice. 
Bishop  Cosin  has  given  us  in  his  Book  of 
Devotions  both  translations  of  Latin  hymns 
(very  little  better  than  those  in  the  Primers) 
and  original  hymns,  of  which  the  following 
is  a  fair  example  : — 

"  Who  more  can  crave 

Than  God  for  me  hath  done 
To  free  a  slave 

That  gave  his  only  son  ? 
Blest  he  that  hour 

When  he  repaired  my  loss, 
I  never  will  forget 

My  Saviour's  Cross, 

"  Whose  death  revives 

My  soul.     Once  was  I  dead, 
But  now  I'll  raise 

Again  my  drooping  head  ; 
And  singing  say, 

And  Baying  sing  forever, 
Blest  he  my  Lord 

That  did  my  soul  deliver.     Amen." 

During  the  early  part  of  the  reign  of 
Charles  I.  lived  and  wrote  George  Wither, 
and  that  sweet  singer  of  the  Temple,  Master 
George  Herbert,  whose  whole  life  was  mel- 
ody, and  "  who  sung  on  earth,"  says  his  bi- 
ographer, "  such  hymns  and  anthems  as  the 

*  Now  known  to  be  the  author  of  the  "  Chris- 
tian  Year." 

1  Holland  in  his"  Psalmists  of  Britain  "  gives 
"  Records  Biographical  and  Literary  "  of  upwards 

of  one  hundred  and  fifty  authors  who  rendered  the 
whole  or  parts  of  the  Book  of  Psalms  into  English 

verse. 


angels  and  he  now  sing  in  heaven."  Still 
almost  every  hymn  of  this  period  is  excluded 
from  modern  Hymn-books  by  the  compli- 
cated metres  which  were  then  in  vogue,  or 
by  language  no  longer  current  among  us. 
One  hymn  only  of  Herbert's  is,  we  believe, 
sung  now,  and  that  only  in  certain  locali- 
ties, beyond  which  its  use  never  has,  and 
probably  never  will  be,  extended.  It  be- 
gins :-— 

"  Throw  away  thy  rod, 
Throw  away  thy  wrath, 

O  my  God, 
Take  the  gentle  path."— The  Temple,  151. 

The  nation  was  not  yet  weary  of  Stern- 
hold's  Psalms,  and  there  was  therefore  no 
demand  for  hymns,  except  as  aids  to  private 
meditation,  and  of  such  we  find  plenty ;  for 
sacred  poetry  flourished  very  especially  in 
those  times,  and  rather  later,  in  the  writ- 
ing of  George  Sandys,  Browne,  Crashaw, 
Giles  Fletcher,  and  the  great  Milton  ;  and 
\  during  the  Protectorate,  Bishop  Jeremy  Tay- 
lor in  his  retreat  at  Lord  Carbery's,  Henry 
Vaughan,  Francis  Quarles,  and  others,  kept 
up  the  succession,  but  more  as  poets  than  as 
hymn-writers. 

Neither  the  supremacy  of  the  Puritans, 
nor  the  return  of  the  Stuarts,  seems  to  have 
been  favorable  to  the  rise  of  Hymnology.  In 
the  first  it  received  a  direct  blow  from  the 
general  overthrow  of  the  Church,  and  the 
introduction  of  Scotch  paraphrases  and  John 
Knox's  Psalms  from  over  the  Border  ;  and 
in  the  second  it  probably  found  too  little  en- 
couragement from  the  dissolute  spirit  of  the 
times  to  enable  it  to  recover  from  its  de- 
pression. For  so  completely  had  the  Puri- 
tans silenced  Church  music,  and  crushed  it 
out,  that  at  the  Restoration  it  was  found  nec- 
essary to  bring  over  a  choir  from  Paris  to 
conduct  the  services  in  the  King's  Chapel.* 
In  1668,  John  Austin,  a  bencher  of  Lincoln's 
Inn  (whose  brother  William  also  had  pub- 
lished his  "  Devotionis  Austiniana)Flamina" 
in  the  last  reign),  published  his  well-known 
"  Devotions  after  the  way  of  Antient  Of-; 
ficcs."  They  contain,  besides  prayers,  a 
great  number  of  "  Psalms  "  of  his  own  com- 
posing, after  the  model  of  those  of  David, 
in  the  same  musical  prose ;  of  which  Dr. 
Orton  says,  that  "  such  noble  and  sublime 
strains  of  devotion  are  not  to  be  met  with  any- 
where else  but  in  the  Bible  ;  "  and  placed  at 
*  Ncwland,  "  Confirmation  Lectures." 


intervals  are  also  metrical  hymns,  mostly  his 
own,  *  of  great  beauty  and  still  greater  fer- 
vor, such  as  might  be  expected  from  one  so 
transported  with  the  love  of  his  Maker  as  to  j 
welcome  his  approaching  death  with  the  re- 
peated exclamation,  "  Satiabor,  Satiabor, 
cum  apparebit  gloria  tua  ;  "  and  to  meet  it 
when  it  came  with  the  cry,  "  Now,  heartily 
for  heaven  through  Jesus  Christ."  One 
hymn  of  this  period  which  deserves  more 
favor  than  compilers  in  general  have  con- 
ferred upon  it  is  that  of  the  celebrated  Rich- 
ard Baxter  : — 

"  Lord,  it  is  not  for  us  to  care 

Whether  we  live  or  die." 

The  saintly  Bishop  Ken  was  the  only  other 
whose  hymns,  written  in  this  century,  have 
formed  for  themselves  any  position  among 
us  ;  and  of  these,  few  are  familiar  with  any 
besides  his  Morning  and  Evening  Hymns, 
suggested,  it  is  thought,  by  the  memory  of 
the  "  Jamlucis  orto  sidere  "  of  St.  Ambrose, 
which,  as  a  Winchester  boy,  he  had  been 
accustomed  to  sing  in  the  college,  and  to 
which  his  hymns  certainly  bear  some  affinity 
in  character. 

For  the  first  fifty  years  after  the  Revolu-  ' 
tion  the  cold  and  worldly  spirit  which  pre- 
vailed was  calculated  to  stunt  rather  than 
assist  the  growth  of  original  Church  poetry. 
The  old  version  of  the  Psalms,  however,  was 
beginning  to  loose  its  hold,  and  King  "Wil- 
liam's chaplain  and  poet  laureate,  after  a 
sharp  struggle,  obtained  the  mastery  for 
their  "  Xew  Version."  But  still  the  Church 
produced  scarcely  anything  original ;  the 
"Court"  approved  of  "Tate  and  Brady," 
and  the  Church  was  content:  with  the  ex- 
ception of  Addison's  well-known  "  When  all 
thy  mercies,  O  my  God,"  nothing  occurs  to 
us  as  having  appeared  at  this  time.  Not  so 
with  the  Nonconformists :  hitherto  they  had 
patiently  shared  with  Church  people  the  in- 
fliction, by  prescription,  of  the  old  Psalms; 
but  Tate  and  Brady  had  dispelled  the  charm  ; 
and  Isaac  Watts,  as  we  have  already  said, 
unfettered  by  any  feelings  of  respect  for 
court  influence,  struck  the  note  of  freedom 
at  once  with  his  Psalms  and  Hymn-,  which 
Bishop  Compton  and  Dr.  Johnson  could  con- 

*  He    adopted    Crasbaw's    translation    of 
41  Lands  Zion."    This  book  was  "reformed  "  (for  ' 
i  was  a  Romanist)  by   Lady  Hopetonn.  and 
was  afterwards  edited  mor 

Hickc;,  who  added  several  hymns  of  his  own. 


HYMNOLOGY.  4G9 

descend  to  praise,  but  not  to  adopt.  The 
prolific  yield  of  hymns  which  followed  this 
first  opening,  and  increased  tenfold  with  the 
AVesleyan  revival,  has  been  already  spoken 
of  in  its  bearing  upon  collections  now  in  use 
in  the  Church  ;  but  there  are  some  features 
in  the  rise  and  character  of  these  hymns 
worthy  of  further  remark.  The  multitude 
not  only  of  hymns  but  of  writers  was  mar- 
vellous. Independent  of  the  labors  of  those 
unwearied  Sisyphi  who  persisted  one  after 
another  in  the  impossible  task  of  versifying 
the  Psalter,  the  number  of  original  writers 
who  put  into  the  treasury  of  sacred  rhyme, 
some  their  mites,  but  more  their  shekels,  if 
not  "  talents,"  from  the  time  when  the  Wes- 
leys  first  moved,  in  1739,  to  the  time  of  their 
deaths,  about  fifty  years  afterwards,  cannot 
be  less,  and  is  probably  much  more,  than  two 
'hundred.  Of  course,  the  gold  is  scarce  ;  but 
there  are  some  exceedingly  fine  contribu- 
J  tions  to  be  picked  out ;  and,  considering  the 
:  very  narrow  range  of  thought,  which  Mr. 
Montgomery  attributes  to  "a  predilection 
i  for  certain  views  of  the  Gospel,"  their  want  of 
variety  is  not  surprising.  "  The  high  call- 
!  ing  of  Methodism,"  writes  one  of  their  eu- 
\  logists,  "  is  experimental  religion.  To  depict 
1  experimental  religion  was  the  high  calling 
of  the  bard  of Methodism"  This  title  be- 
longs par  excellence  to  Charles  Wesley,  but 
the  above  statement  will  apply  to  all  their 
hvmn-writers.  It  was  this  personal  and  sub- 
jective side  of  the  Gospel  which  they  strove 
to  bring  into  prominence  by  their  hymns  ; 
and  this  is  curiously  illustrated  by  Mr.  Bur- 
gess, though  unconsciously,  in  his  "  Wes- 
leyan  Hymnology,"  where  he  expresses  his 
gratitude  to  the  writers,  for  that  "  he  has 
often  been  instructed  and  admonished,  re- 
proved and  stimulated,  comforted  and  ani- 
mated, while  singing  these  songs  of  Zion.'' 
He  measures  a  hymn  by  the  same  standard 
as  he  would  a  sermon,  by  its  effects  upon  the 
feelings  of  the  congregation  ;  he  d< 
look  for — so  does  not  miss — the  "  Dei"  of 
S.  Augustine's  canon  ;  it  appears  to  he  but 
a  secondary  part  of  the  Methodist  notion 
of  a  hymn,  that  it  is  a  channel  ofprttu 

One  co:  of  this  re- 

flective character  in  these  hymns  is  that  a 
large  majority  of  them  are  written  in  the 
singular  Dumber,  a  thing  consistent  enough 
witli  this  self-inspection  by  each  person,  but 
not  with  the  united  song  of  a  congr 


470  HYMNOLOGY. 

looking  Godward ;  it  is  a  sure  mark  of  the 
late  date  of  a  hymn,  being  a  point  in  which 
the  moderns  "  a  moribus  Ecclesiae  antiqui- 
oris  quam  maxime  abhorrent."  *  Even  within 
the  period  of  the  Wesleyan  movement  this 
deteriorating  tendency  to  personal  hymns  is 
visible  ;  for  in  the  earlier  publications  of 
John  and  Charles,  especially  in  the  "  Sacra- 
mental Hymns  "  (which,  by  the  way,  are  so 
"  high  "  in  their  doctrine  that  their  follow- 
ers now  repudiate  them),  the  hymns  are 
much  more  congregational. 
.  In  spite  of  these  drawbacks  English  hym- 
nology  owes  much  to  Wesleyanism,  and  not 
a  little  to  other  denominations.  To  Dr. 
Watts  we  are  indebted  for  that  famous 
hymn, — the  language  of  which  unhappily  is 
as  open  to  criticism  as  its  spirit  is  above  it, 
— "  When  I  survey  the  wondrous  cross  ;  " 
and  to  another  Calvinist,  though  a  Church- 
man, Augustus  Toplady,  for  "  the  most  de- 
servedly popular  hymn ;  perhaps  the  very 
favorite— very  beautiful  it  is."  For  such  is 
Dr.  Pusey's  encomium,  quoted  by  Mr.  Pear- 
son, f  upon  the  hymn — 

"  Rock  of  Ages,  cleft  for  me, 
Let  mo  hide  myself  in  thee/'  etc. 

Dr.  Doddridge,  Cowper,  and  Newton,  and 
other  voluminous  writers  of  different  denom- 
inations, must  not  be  forgotten,  though  their 
number  is  too  great  for  us  to  notice  them 
individually. 

From  the  Wesleyans  themselves,  as  rep- 
resented in  their  "  poetical  Bible,"  as  their 
collection  has  been  called,  compilers  for  the 
Church  have  drawn  freely ;  no  church  in 
England  probably  has  not  resounded  with 
the  hymn  of  the  Welsh  blacksmith,  Thomas 
Olivers,  and  its  popular,  but  questionable, 
tune — 
"  Lo !     He  comes  with  clouds  descending." 

Olivers  also  wrote  the  fine  lyric  stanzas  be- 
ginning, "  The  God  of  Abraham  praise  ;  " 
and  the  origin  of  another  hymn  is  traced  to 
two  brothers,  also  in  a  humble  situation  in 
life,  the  one  an  itinerant  preacher,  the  other 
a  porter,  of  whom  the  following  story  is  told 
in  reference  to  the  composition  of  the  hymn. 
The  preacher  desired  the  porter  to  carry  him 

*  "  Ilvmni  Ecclesiae,"  p.  243.  It  has  been  con- 
tested in  favor  of  hymns  in  the  first  person  that 
many  of  the  Psalms  of  David  are  so  written:  this 
was  satisfactorily  answered  by  the  writer  of  the 
Article  in  the  Quarterly,  July,  1828. 

t  "  Oxford  Essays,"  1868. 


a  letter.  "  I  can't  go,"  he  replied  ;  "lam 
writing  a  hymn."  "  You  write  a  hymn,  in- 
deed !  nonsense  !  go  with  the  letter,  and  I 
will  finish  the  hymn."  He  went,  and  re- 
turned. The  preacher  had  taken  it  up  at 
the  third  verse,  and  his  muse  had  forsaken 
him  at  the  eighth.  "  Give  me  the  pen," 
said  the  porter,  and  wrote  off: — 

"  They  brought  His  chariot  from  above 
To  bear  Him  to  His  throne, 
Clapped  their  triumphant  wings,  and  cried, 
'  The  glorious  work  is  done.'  " 

But  we  must  proceed.  In  the  beginning  of 
the  present  century  the  impetus  of  the  Meth- 
odist revival  had  expended  itself ;  there  was 
a  lull,  and  then  another  stirring  of  the  wa- 
ters, but  this  time  chiefly  within  the  Church 
of  England,  by  Bishop  Heber,  Dean  Mil- 
man,  Sir  Robert  Grant,  Lyte,  and  Bishop 
Mant.  ,  But  to  the  last-named  prelate  we 
owe  a  change  which  has  gone  far  to  revolu- 
tionize our  hymnology,  though  in  a  good 
direction.  Here  and  there  along  the  course 
we  have  been  following  since  the  Reforma- 
tion we  might  have  found  isolated  attempts 
to  translate  some  choice  Latin  hymn ; 
Crashaw,  Drummond,  Dryden,  and  Hickes 
had  each  contributed  one  or  two  ;  but  Bishop 
Mant  went  a  step  further,  and,  taking  the 
Roman  Breviary,  translated,  with  few  excep- 
tions, all  that  it  contained.  This  leading 
was  followed  with  such  zeal  by  Mr.  Williams 
(who  did  the  same  by  the  Paris  Breviary), 
by  Mr.  Copeland,  Mr.  Chandler,  Dr.  Pusey, 
Mr.  Caswall,  Mr.  Wackerbarth,  Mr.  Blew, 
Dr.  Neale,  and  many  more,  that  there  have 
been  produced  almost  as  many  Anglo-Latin 
as  new  and  original  English  hymns  during 
the  last  thirty  years. 

And  here  several  curious  reflections  arise. 
This  resuscitation  of  the  Latin  hymns  coin- 
cided in  time  with  the  remarkable  Church 
movement  at  Oxford,  identified  with  the 
"  Tracts  for  the  Times."  As  was  the  case 
with  the  Wesleyan  revival  in  the  last  cen- 
tury, so  with  this  Church  revival,  it  gave  an 
unusual  impulse  to  hymnology,  leading  to 
the  conclusion  that  there  is  a  peculiar  apti- 
tude in  hymns  on  the  one  hand  for  giving 
expression  to  the  religious  feelings  of  the 
writer,  and  on  the  other  for  the  propagation 
of  those  feelings  among  others.  Again,  the 
Oxford  movement  was  to  a  great  extent  a 
counter-movement,  not  in  the  sense  of  an 
opposition,  but  a  reaction,  or  rather  re-ad- 


justment ;  therefore,  whereas  the  Wesleyans, 
who  sought  new  paths  for  themselves,  sought 
also  new  hymns  of  a  new  character,  the 
Church  party,  who  aimed  at  recovering  the 
old  paths  that  had  been  lost,  were  naturally 
led  to  take  up  the  ancient  hymns.  The 
Wesleyan,  again,  with  a  predilection  for  the 
experimental  side  of  Christianity,  found  the 
spiritual  food  most  congenial  to  him  in  the 
ecstatic  raptures  of  the  Methodist  hymns  ; 
the  Churchman,  on  the  contrary,  restoring, 
perhaps  unconsciously,  the  balance,  by  lean- 
ing more  to  the  objective  expression  of  truth, 
welcomed  the  calm  narrative  songs  of  primi- 
tive and  mediaeval  times. 

It  is  not  meant  by  this  that  the  produc- 
tions of  modern  Church  hymn-writers  are 
exclusively  translations  ;  far  from  it :  the 
names  of  Keble,  Neale,  Moultrie,  Monsell, 
Alford,  Archer  Gurney,  J.  H.  Gurney,  are 
of  themselves  sufficient  to  vindicate  the 
claim  of  the  Church  in  these  days  to  origi- 
nality ;  but  this  may  be  said  truly,  that  the 
study  of  the  ancient  models  has  had  a 
marked  influence  on  these  modern  hymns. 

Our  own  space  and  our  reader's  patience 
would  fail  us  if  we  attempted  to  push  out 
now  into  the  Atlantic,  and  follow  our  emi- 
grant hymn-writers  in  the  New  World,  or 
even  to  dive  into  the  recesses  of  the  Scotch 
and  Welsh  glens ;  yet  there  they  are  to  be 
found.  The  late  venerable  Bishop  Doane, 
of  New  Jersey  ;  the  Rev.  A.  C.  Coxe,  of 
Baltimore  ;  and  Mr.  Bullock,  of  Nova  Scotia, 
are  all  claimants  on  our  gratitude,  for  their 
hymns  are  found  in  several  of  our  collec- 
tions. From  the  Welsh  Methodist,  W. 
Williams,  we  have  (a  translation  by  him  of 
his  own  Welsh  original)  the  well-known 
missionary  hymn,  "  O'er  the  gloomy  hills  of 
darkness,"  and  "  Shepherd  of  thine  Israel, 
guide  us."  From  Scotland  we  have  Logan's 
"  O  God  of  Abraham,  by  whose  hand,"  and 
several  others  ;  and  the  Kirk  is  largely  sup- 
plied with  her  vigorous  paraphrases. 

Our  travels  are  over.  AVe  have  spied  out, 
not,  we  think,  the  nakedness,  but  the  rich- 
ness, of  the  lands.  We  have  seen  the  works 
of  the  Anakim  of  sacred  song ;  we  have 
brought  home  of  the  grapes  and  pomegran- 
ates, not  as  thieves,  but  as  having  a  right  in 
them.  Cut  off  though  we  be  geographically 
from  the  rest  of  mankind,   and   separated 


HYMNOLOGY.  471 

Churches  of  the  Old  World,  still,  we  repeat, 
we  must  never  surrender  our  claim  as  true 
Catholics  to  the  common  store  of  Christen- 
dom. Like  Tennyson's  Ulysses,  we  return 
home  to  our  Ithaca  to  feel 

"  I  am  a  part  of  all  that  I  have  met." 

But  with  special  reference  to  the  practical 
purpose  with  which  we  set  out — what  is  the 
conclusion  to  be  drawn  from  allr  this  as  to  the 
feasibility  of  some  regulation  and  amend- 
ment of  our  present  condition  ?  Assuming 
that  it  must  be  brought  about  by  the  prepa- 
ration of  an  approved  and  authorized  hymn- 
book,  there  is  little  doubt  that  good  as  well 
as  bad  has  come  of  past  delay,  if  it  is  only 
that  it  has  given  us  time  and  opportunity  to 
look  round  us.  But  it  is  not  less  certain — 
as  this  hasty  and  superficial  sketch  will  have 
shown — that  our  knowledge  of  the  subject  is 
yet  far  from  ripe ;  even  the  materials  that 
now  lie  within  reach  are  rough  and  unfit, 
without  much  more  revision  and  re-arrange- 
ment, to  be  worked  up  satisfactorily. 

But  let  the  English  Church  appreciate  her 
position  in  this  matter  —  a  position  such  as 
no  Church  ever  held  before  for  undertaking 
this  work  ;  let  her  lay  the  whole  world  un- 
der tribute  ;  let  her  rejoice  in  being  able  to 
take  as  she  will  of  the  soft  utterances  of 
Asia,  and  the  deep  teaching  of  the  Greek 
odes,  the  terse  diction  and  subdued  fire  of 
the  Latins,  and  the  bold  energy  of  the  Ger- 
mans, and  to  weld  them  together  with  the 
fervent  raptures  of  those  at  home  who  have 
wandered  from  her  fold,  and  the  chastened 
devotion  of  her  more  dutiful  children.  It  is 
a  great  work  ;  it  is  a  great  opportunity  ;  we 
cannot  but  long  for  its  accomplishment ;  yet 
we  dread  a  failure.  There  is  just  so  much 
already  at  hand  as  to  tempt  us  into  action  ; 
there  is  just  that  amount  of  half-prepared- 
ness to  make  us  act  in  haste,  and  repent  at 
leisure.  There  is  a  proverb — and  we  would 
write  it  over  this  subject — u  Wait  a  little, 
and  make  an  end  the  sooner."  It  is  unbe- 
coming the  dignity  and  high  character  of 
our  Church  to  be  ever  making  and  unmaking 
her  formulas  ;  let  her  bishops  and  doctors 
then  begin,  if  they  will,  at  once,  but  with 
the  determination  to  spare  neither  labor  nor 
time,  even  if  years  pass  away  before  they 
can  with  confidence  lay  before  US  a  "  llymna- 
rium"  worthy  of  our  history  and  our  lan- 
guage; thoroughly  consonant  with  the  tone 
and  teaching  01  OUT  1'rayer-book  ;  and  such 
that  the  Church  of  our  time  may  set  to  it 
her  seal,  and    hand   it   down    to  p 


•<>  future  generations,  and  a  last- 


too,  as   to  external    communion,   from   the  |  ing  monument  of  the  present. 


472 


SISTER    ANNA'S    PROBATION, 


CHAPTER  III. 

There  was  as  much  excitement,  and  al- 
most as  much  demonstration  and  holiday- 
making  about  Anna's  sacred  espousals  in  the 
next  October,  as  there  had  been  about  her 
sister's  marriage  in  the  last.  At  the  Manor- 
house,  and  in  the  village,  everybody  was  re- 
leased from  work  to  go  to  Stoke,  and  see 
Mistress  Anna  and  Mistress  Emilia  take  the 
veil.  Up  to  the  very  morning  the  seam- 
stresses were  busy,  under  Dame  Atherstone's 
direction,  in  preparing  the  entire  bridal  cos- 
tume ;  and  the  cooks  were  preparing  to 
feast  the  gentry  in  the  hall,  and  the  laborers 
and  their  families  in  the  home-field.  Eleanor 
and  her  husband  arrived,  with  their  infant 
and  its  nurse,  in  order  that  the  little  one 
might  have  the  honor  of  being  in  the  arms 
of  its  saintly  aunt  on  the  day  of  her  conse- 
cration. Every  vehicle,  horse,  mule,  pillion 
was  engaged;  and  those  who  could  not 
ride  were  willing  to  trudge  to  Stoke,  rather 
than  miss  the  spectacle.  As  the  family 
coach,  full  inside  and  out,  appeared  at  each 
turn  of  the  road,  everybody  made  way  ;  and 
all  heads  were  uncovered  as  the  family 
passed.  Little  was  said  within  the  carriage. 
Eleanor  was  weeping,  and  her  husband  very 
grave.  The  Squire  was  already  more  moved 
than  he  had  expected,  and  there  were  tears 
now  and  then  on  the  Dame's  face,  though 
she  declared  herself  the  proudest  and  hap- 
piest of  mothers. 

"  You  hear,  Bet,"  said  the  Squire  to  his 
youngest  daughter.  "  Will  you  be  a  nun 
by  and  by  ?     You  see  what  it  is  to  be  a  nun." 

"  No,  I  wont,"  replied  Bet,  positively. 

"  No,  my  love  ;  one  in  a  family  is  enough," 
said  her  mother. 

Bet  was  well  pleased  to  hear  this  ;  but  it 
rather  surprised  her.  If  to  be  a  nun  was  to 
be  sure  of  heaven,  would  it  not  be  a  bless- 
ing that  all  the  daughters  of  every  house 
should  be  nuns  ? 

Then  Hubert  rode  up  to  the  window  to 
tell  what  coaches  and  riders  he  saw  approach- 
ing Stoke,  and  how  the  field-paths  were  full 
of  country-people,  all  making  for  the  con- 
vent. When  they  came  within  sight  of  the 
beach,  they  saw  that  the  boats  were  drawn 
up  on  the  sands,  that  the  fishermen  and  their 
families  might  see  the  sight.  The  Bishop 
intended  to  honor  his  niece  by  his  presence, 
and  by  himself  examining  her  as  to  her  fit- 
ness for  her  profession,     lie  had  come  over 


to  his  country  house  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Stoke,  and  he  was  closeted  with  Anna 
first,  and  then  with  Emilia,  before  the  rela- 
tives of  each  arrived. 

Elizabeth  was  not  there.  Anna  had  lost 
her  only  personal  friend  in  that  house  :  and 
the  circumstance  cast  a  gloom  over  the  day, 
in  spite  of  every  effort  to  rejoice  that  Eliza- 
beth had  escaped  the  dreariest  fate  on  earth 
— that  of  the  reluctant  nun.  She  feared  to 
think  what  her  friend's  fate  would  be  under 
the  evil  repute  of  refusing  to  be  the  spouse 
of  Christ.  She  attempted  a  word  of  appeal 
to  her  uncle,  that  he  would  secure  merciful 
treatment  for  one  who  was  too  upright  to 
take  vows  with  half  a  heart ;  but  the  Bishop 
coldly  reminded  her  that  her  own  affairs 
should  engross  her  this  day,  and  that  he  must 
judge  for  himself  about  dealing  with  persons 
of  doubtful  faith.  Still,  she  ventured  to 
petition  her  mother,  and  more  hopefully, 
Eleanor.  Eleanor  was  ready,  in  the  softness 
of  her  heart,  to  promise  more  than  she  could 
be  sure  of  performing ;  but  the  Dame  an- 
swered, as  it  was  inevitable  that  she  should, 
that  in  such  matters  the  family,  and  every 
member  of  it,  must  be  guided  by  the  Bishop. 
The  worst  of  it  was  that  the  Reverend 
Mother  was  present  all  the  time.  It  was 
her  duty  ;  nobody  disputed  that ;  but  it  did 
seem  hard  that  even  the  last  embrace  on 
earth  should  be  witnessed  by  a  spiritual  su- 
perior. Meetings  at  stated  times  would  be 
permitted ;  but,  if  even  father  and  brother 
were  there,  with  a  partition  between;  and 
never  more  could  they  exchange  a  word  un- 
heard by  the  Reverend  Mother.  It  was 
above  all  things  necessary  that  there  should 
not  be  room  for  the  slightest  suspicion  of 
the  slightest  levity  in  any  intercourse  held 
by  the  spouse  of  Christ  with  the  world.  The 
Reverend  Mother  must  know  all  that  she 
did  and  said,  and  her  confessor  all  that  she 
thought. 

Yet  her  father  whispered  in  her  ear  the 
question  which  the  moment  wrung  from 
him.  Was  she  quite  certain  of  her  voca- 
tion ?  He  had  sometimes  thought  lately 
that  it  had  been  too  much  taken  for  granted. 
If  she  had  any  doubt,  or  wished  for  more 
time,  he  would  carry  her  through — even  now, 
at  the  last  moment.  And  convents  were  not 
altogether  so  well  thought  of  as  they  were  ; 
people  did  say  strange  things  about  some  of 
them.    If  his  dear  child  would  prefer  another 


